


The Lights of Paeregosto City

by ap_trash_compactor



Category: Star Wars: Thrawn - Timothy Zahn
Genre: 5 Times, F/M, No Smut, One Shot Collection, character death in chapter 2 only, faro's here but she doesn't get enough to do to get a character tag, rated for some violence in a couple of chapters, self indulgent as heck obviously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-23 14:37:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13789806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ap_trash_compactor/pseuds/ap_trash_compactor
Summary: Arihnda's life is a series of shatterpoints, and none is more terrible than her visit to Batonn. I can think of at least five ways events might have been less terrible for everyone around her — and even a few ways they might have been less terrible for her.





	1. Command Decision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Creekpath would have fared much better if Arihnda Pryce had been persuaded to stay on the Chimaera. "Persuasion," of course, comes in different forms.

_“Sometimes a commander’s decisions must be made without regard for how they will be perceived." - Mitth'raw'nuruodo_

 

 

“I’ll coordinate with Commander Vanto on frequencies and passwords,” says Colonel Yularen.

“Of course,” says Thrawn. “But before we begin - Governor Pryce, may I have a word? In private?”

Colonel Yularen coughs, and Commander Vanto jolts in his seat. Commander Faro and Agent Gudry grow quite still. Thrawn may not be noted for his political acumen, but usually even he knows when not to pick a fight — especially with civilian administrators who outrank him. And Pryce, even an academy cadet knows, outranks everyone on the ship. The fact that he’s asking to do it behind closed doors doesn’t make it any less obvious to the other five people in the room that he intends to throw the entire conference out the window and go for round two over the safety and effectiveness of the Governor’s plan.

Thrawn ignores the frisson passing through the other officers. He is gazing steadily at Arihnda, as he has been doing for the entirety of the meeting. He has not had an opportunity to observe her so closely in some time — not since she sought his help with Higher Skies.

Arihnda raises her eyebrows slightly. “Of course, Admiral,” she says, smoothly. Magnanimously. He does not care for the tone. It is one of many small changes that have accumulated in her like craquelure.

Yularen rises briskly. “Of course, Admiral.” And to Arihnda: “Governor.” He glances at the other officers. “We’ll be outside.”

The other members of the small conference rise awkwardly, and shuffle out. They move as if dragging their feet will let them watch the show, or stop the disaster, but neither Arihnda nor Thrawn move so much as a muscle until the room is empty and the door is closed behind Vanto, who is the last and most reluctant to leave.

Well, that is not quite true. After a moment, while the others are still rising, Arihnda, swallowing, color blooming on her cheeks, averts her eyes from Thrawn, gaze flitting restlessly along the walls.

He does not move his gaze from her.

He wonders if she, too, is remembering Higher Skies. Perhaps she is remembering that he has never failed to help her when given an opportunity. Perhaps she is realizing that if she needs help, she need only ask him.

It is no matter. If she would prefer not to ask, that is fine. He will help her anyway. It will benefit them both, in the end.

As soon as the door closes behind Vanto, Arihnda rises sharply from her chair. “Well, Admiral,” she says in a clipped but suitably pleasant manner, pushing her chair back and beginning to head for the door, “let’s make it quick.” She is still looking anywhere but at him.

“I wanted a moment to express my thanks to you, Governor Pryce,” says Thawn slowly, watching her.

Arihnda hesitates, stops, and turns to face him.

It is clear that she can sense the edges of the trap, though she does not yet know exactly what it is. “You do?” she offers finally; it is a miscalculation from which she will not recover.

“Yes,” says Thrawn, rising smoothly from his chair, leaving his fingers pressed against the tabletop as if to assure her he has no intention of moving from his present position. He can see her ticking through possibilities, trying to wriggle out of the moment without burning a valuable bridge.

He has always been patient.

“May I ask — for what, Admiral?”

“My first _major_ promotion, of course,” he says smoothly, with subtle emphasis on the adjective, straightening up, walking a few long strides to the head of the table. He is not quite between her and the door, but she will have to pass close to him if she wants to leave.

She laughs, a practiced sound. “I don’t know what —”

“Grand Moff Tarkin informed me of your recommendation,” he says, cutting across her with an even tone. “I only regret that I have not taken the time to express my gratitude more fully before.”

Her face is utterly closed now, cautious uncertainty replaced with narrow wariness. “Your service to the empire has been thanks enough,” she says. She is tense now, trying to hide the tightness in her shoulders. She has become very good at hiding the truth, he observes: a natural talent cultivated to the level of a true skill.

But he knows why she is heading down to Batonn. It puts many things about her in context. He appreciates context; it provides clarity.

“Indeed,” he says. “But I would like to express my —” he pauses slightly — “ _personal_ gratitude.”

Her eyes dart to the door and back. She has always reminded him of a prey animal; it makes her gift for survival, and the brutality with which she thrusts her will upon the world, all the more fascinating. “I’m flattered,” she says flatly. “If that’s all...”

“No, Governor, I’m afraid that is not all,” he says. “As an expression of my personal gratitude, I will assign a special duty squadron to retrieve your parents from Batonn and deliver them to you here, aboard the Chimaera, before our invasion of the city begins. When we have secured the city and ensured that travel to and from the planet is safe again, we will of course deliver you and your parents safely to Lothal.”

It takes a few seconds for her to craft a response. It is not an appreciative one. His may be a good offer, but it impugns her rank, and, more importantly, denies her direct control of the situation.

“You may think you know everything,” she hisses tightly, “but you cannot always get your way just by snapping your fingers. They won’t go with your _special squadron,_ and I won’t leave them down there to d—”

“They will come with my men whether they like it or not,” he says honestly, cutting off the argument, “and you will stay here.”

She stares. The idea that he means it, really means it, is starting to take root. “They are my parents,” she says. A queer, unnerving tone has crept into the edges of her voice: the rusty tenor of honest emotion from a person no longer accustomed to feeling. It’s outsized and unbalanced, like the emotions of a child. “They never do anything they don’t want to but I can always persuade —”

“You will not leave this ship,” Thrawn says, gently. “The recapture of Creekpath’s facilities will be a delicate and complicated matter. I can’t have you interfering, not even by accident. The risk is, simply, too great — to both my operation and to you. And, I might add, to your parents.”

There is a brief moment of stillness. Then, she snaps back into her normal mode, drawing the arrogance of her rank around herself like a cloak, and strides towards the door as if Thrawn did not exist.

It is a trick that might work on someone afraid of her authority.

He takes a single step into her path and catches her by the elbow. She stops, and doesn’t pull away. She stands facing the door, and he stands beside her, grasping her arm, watching her face.

“This is not the way to treat a high Imperial official, Admiral,” she grinds out, chin high, back straight, voice cold and angry. “I am a Governor of the Empire and I will have you court-martialed and —”

“You may do that,” he allows, “but you may not leave this ship.”

As he says it, he reaches out for the control port on the wall. It is almost out of his reach, but his fingers can just brush the interface. The door slides open to reveal Yularen, Faro, Gudry, and Eli clustered as close to the door as is polite. They stare uncertainty at Thrawn and Arihnda.

“Commander Vanto,” Thrawn says smoothly, “Governor Pryce is to be detained in this room for her own protection.”

A look of gaping, slack-jawed surprise blooms on each face in the hall. After a tangible silence their voices all break out at once. Yularen’s can be heard pronouncing the word “outrageous,” Faro gasps, Gudry curses vehemently, and —

“Admiral!” Eli cries, horrified.

“Thrawn,” Yularen sputters, “You cannot detain a Governor of the Empire —”

“Commander Vanto,” Thrawn says evenly, ignoring their protests.

~~

Eli snaps to.

Governor Pryce may have all their heads on a single silver platter when this is over, but he’s not going to jump the gun and mutiny on her behalf. Certainly not against Thrawn. As a matter of Imperial political hierarchy, Governor Pryce may be in the right, but Thrawn has earned Eli’s unwavering trust over years, and Eli’s trust is a hard thing to break.

“Sir,” says Eli, and he steps into the room.

“Don't be a fool Commander,” she says, voice low, as he does.

Eli takes her free arm.

Then a couple of things happen at once.

Thrawn drops her arm and moves out into the hall in two long strides.

The protests from the hall redouble, and Yularen steps toward the room.

Governor Pryce, much less amenable to being held by Eli than by Thrawn, wrenches her arm free and lunges forward. Whatever resistance Eli expected, it wasn't this sudden, powerful surge. He's a half a moment too slow to stop her. She moves like it's the will of the Force itself that she pass into the hall and leave the ship.

She doesn't make it. Thrawn, between Yularen and the room, turns on his heel in the hall and presses the control panel on the outside of the door. It slides shut just as she reaches it. After a short, angry, and stupefied pause she tries the control panel, but the door is already locked. Eli suspects only Thrawn’s own code cylinders will reopen it.

Face twisted in rage, Governor Pryce smacks her palm against the door. “Thrawn!” She screams at the impassive durasteel bulkhead. “Thrawn! _You can’t do this!_ ”

But of course he has done it.

One of the lessons of power, which Eli has learned well from his time with Thrawn, is that any act _fait accompli_ is worth a thousand times as much as the spoken word. Governor Pryce, Eli suspects, knows this too. For a minute she stares at the door as if she can will it to open. Then, for lack of anything better to do, she smacks the control panel again bitterly, and smacks it again, and again, and curses.

Eli almost pities her.

He pities himself more.

~~

In the hall, there is a different shouting match. Yularen, scandalized, plays the main part. Faro, horrified, and Gudry, furious, together play the part of a soundly ignored Greek chorus. Thrawn does not raise his voice at all.

“You can not,” Yularen bellows, “imprison a Governor —”

“For said Governor’s safety, Colonel Yularen, I can, I will, and I have,” Thrawn says evenly. He turns away from Yularen’s sputtering indignation. “Commander Faro,” he says, “you will go to the bridge and ensure that our operation proceeds on schedule.” For a moment, Faro merely gapes at him. A flash of his eyes and she snaps a salute and turns smartly on her heel. “Agent Gudry,” he says, turning to the next source of irritation, “I presume you feel competent to infiltrate and reconnoitre our target without the Governor’s assistance?” There is a tense, uncomfortable silence while Gudry’s eyes dart between the Navy Admiral and the ISB Colonel, weighing rank against agency affiliation. Rank wins. He nods. “Good,” says Thrawn. “You are dismissed.” Gudry, like Faro, salutes smartly and turns on his heel, proceeding down the hallway in the opposite direction: not towards the bridge, but towards the hangar bay. Thrawn then turns his attention to Yularen, who is flushed, wide-eyed, still flabbergasted.

“Thrawn,” he says, almost pleadingly, “this is —”

“Colonel Yularen,” Thrawn says, “I need you to do something for me.”

Yularen shakes his head in disbelief. “You’ll be stripped of your commission,” he says sadly.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. First, I need you to do something for me.”

“What?”

“I need you to assign a special duty squadron, for exfiltration.”

Yularen frowns and tilts his head, his distress temporarily subsumed by curiosity. “You have an informant in Batonn?” he guesses.

“Hardly,” says Thrawn, face grave. “Your men are to retrieve Governor Pryce’s parents — Talmoor Pryce, a foreman at Creekpath Mining, and his wife Elainye, who I believe at this hour are both to be found in their apartment in the residential sector of the complex — and bring them to this ship, immediately.”

A series of emotions flash across Yularen’s face: shock, understanding, and, finally, anger. “She was planning to extract them herself?” He growls.

“Ah,” says Thrawn wryly, “I see you were not apprised of her true motivations.”

“No,” says Yularen darkly.

“We can forgive the Governor eventually,” Thrawn says, “I think. But I believe it would be best not to have a civilian pursuing an independent agenda at cross-purposes to our own.”

“Indeed,” says Yularen. He hesitates. “You’re sure you want to send an entire —”

“The Governor is a powerful member of the Civilian government and a valuable political ally, Colonel,” Thrawn says. He hesitates, then takes a high-risk gamble. “And I consider her something of a friend. I would appreciate it very much if you retrieved her parents.”

Yularen studies Thrawn for a long moment. Thrawn senses something passing between them, and hopes he has read it right. Making himself so vulnerable is more dangerous than his usual ploys. Then, Yularen extends a hand. Thrawn extends his own, and Yularen grasps it by the wrist with a sudden, firm motion. Thrawn grasps back. “You know I’ve always liked you,” Yularen says. “And Governor Pryce is lucky to have earned your friendship.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” says Thrawn, relief carefully concealed beneath a neutral sort of confidence. Eli might berate him for a lack of social acumen, but Thrawn knows that friendships are the true glue and grease of the Empire, and that among humans they grow stronger when some secret piece of intimacy has been exchanged. Yularen had been bound to him, before, by professional admiration. Now the tie is stronger, more enduring. More valuable. “Colonel, while you dispatch the extraction team and oversee preparations for a ground assault, I will attempt to negotiate a surrender. I believe Nightswan will speak with me. If he refuses, we will proceed with operations as discussed in two hours’ time. Is that sufficient?”

“More than sufficient, Admiral,” says Yularen.

~~

The next two hours are the longest of Eli’s life.

Governor Pryce moves through all the stages of outraged authority. Eli is tired of them before they begin and he suspects she is, as well. Still, she goes through them like an actor trapped in a bad play: beating the door. Threatening, cursing, and screaming. Threatening Thrawn. Threatening Eli personally. Threatening the entire Navy (she kicks a chair after this last, as if out of frustration with her own impotent absurdity). There is an awkward period where she turns away from him and sniffles and wipes at her face. Embarrassed for them both, and presciently afraid of what retribution any feeling of shame on her part might prompt later, Eli shuffles awkwardly back against the wall and tries to be invisible. Her crying is succeeded by a long period of silence, followed by a renewed round of threats, followed by a pathetic offer of professional advancement at Thrawn’s expense.

This last is a cheap and hollow ploy, and Eli thinks she’s even more embarrassed by it than he is.

Finally, she slumps into a chair, exhausted. She stares at the wall for a long while, then looks at Eli, curiously, as if seeing him for the first time. “They’re my parents,” she says pathetically, as if she has only now realized that some excuse is owed for her shabby behavior.

“Yes, ma’am,” Eli says as kindly as he can. “I understand.” But he’s not any less angry.

“They’re my parents,” she says again, but not to him, and Eli senses that this is an excuse made to herself for something he does not understand. And to this, Eli does not reply.

They do not speak again until the door to the conference room opens. The Governor jerks up, then stops. Thrawn enters alone. His expression is neutral.

“A moment, Vanto, if you please,” he says. Eli slips out of the room as quickly as he can.

~~

Thrawn and Arihnda face each other, unmoving. Uncertain.

Thrawn finds he does not like the feeling of hollow space between them. They have never been close, but they had always shared, he felt, a kind of natural rapport. He had always thought there was between them a sort of scaffolding of natural smilitude within which a rewarding partnership might be built. Now, he senses something different in its place, and he considers that his actions may have had a higher cost than he desired. Perhaps his actions have weakened, rather than strengthened, the bond between them.

He can accept this; his primary goals are achieved merely through her presence on the ship. Still, he does not _like_ it.

She is watching him with a complicated mix of emotions flickering across her face: rage and humiliation, hope and fear, exhaustion and resignation. She must be very worn indeed, to let her face be as open as expressive at it was at Gilroy Plaza. It's a rare opportunity and he takes full advantage, watching her, considering how she might behave when this is over. He miscalculates: he watches her a moment too long, and her face crumples into pitiful, childlike distress and is then rapidly recomposed into something cold and harsh. He wonders if the door is truly shut between them.

“Well?” she bites out.

“The retrieval was successful,” he says.

She stands rigid. “But?” she asks.

“No buts,” he says carefully, “your parents are well and are disembarking in the hangar bay.”

Arihnda grips the back of a chair, knuckles white. “You will bring me to them,” she commands.

“I will bring _them_ to _you_ ,” he corrects. He pauses, considers, explains. “I wanted to make sure you were… presentable… first.” It is only partly a lie.

A flicker of surprise, replaced quickly by anger. Her mouth thins into a hard line. “And do I meet with your approval, Admiral?”

He does not respond, at first. “I am sorry for the circumstances,” he says at length. He opens a comm. “Agent Gudry, please escort Governor Pryce’s family to the conference room.”

“Right away, sir,” comes the reply.

Arihnda watches him, silent and angry. He waits patiently until the door slides open behind him. Arihnda’s eyes flicker from his face to the figures in the doorway behind him, and her mask crumbles. The pure and honest thing he sees there, in the face that is no longer looking at him, is its own kind of art.

“Arihnda,” Elainye cries, and Arihnda, pushed past pretense, holds out her arms as her mother and Talmoor surge into the room. As her parents envelop her, her eyes flicker to Thrawn and for a moment, he thinks he sees — something. Something like gratitude, perhaps, or acceptance. Something he might build from. Perhaps he has succeeded, after all.

“Come, Agent Gudry,” he says to the man in the hall as he steps out of the room. “I’m sure Commander Faro can use us on the bridge."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thrawn (2017) novel canon only need apply.


	2. A Warrior Must Not Dwell on Failure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arihnda was smart enough to ask Thrawn for his help once before. Things might have turned out differently if she'd done it again. (Major character death in this chapter.)

" _I'm in something of a situation. I think you're also dealing with some problems. I'm hoping we can help each other out." - Arihnda Pryce_

 

 

On the shuttle, Arihnda cannot keep still.

She tries her best, but she keeps rubbing her arms, getting up to look out the window — she knows this does not inspire Yularen’s confidence, still less Gudry’s, but knowing doesn’t make it easier to stop.

She hasn’t felt this way since… Probably since being trapped on the lower levels of Coruscant. She still wonders if that wasn’t a ploy by Juahir, a trick to make her receptive to later suggestions. Juahir’s arrival with Ottlis had been so convenient — Arihnda curls her hands into fists. Not the time, she tells herself. Not the time.

She thinks of her father’s reliable, somber face, thinks of her mother’s mild hypochondria and brittle, tender smiles. She takes a breath. Not the time.

~~

The Chimaera is beautiful, Arihnda thinks, peering at it as they approach. It has an elaborate sigil of its namesake painted on its underbelly: a kind of feathered serpent with many heads that coils at the base of the ship and twines out along its ventral spine. It’s painted in a light grey that gives just enough contrast against the ship’s hull that the details of its scales and spines tease rather than assault the eye. How fitting for its captain, she thinks. 

She thinks of her mother taking her to see the Old Republic Senate Building on Lothal. She was twelve, perhaps. 

She chews her lip nervously, catches her reflection in the mirror, primps her hair anxiously like an idiot schoolgirl, then turns away quickly. Thrawn is not receptive to cheap tricks.

When she conceived of this insane ploy she had assumed that she already has his favor, but as the shuttle maneuvers gently towards the docking bay she has to breathe through a sudden flood of panic. She’s spoken to him perhaps three times in her life. It’s an awfully big assumption for her to make, that he will care. That there is any bond between them she can draw upon.

“Governor?” Yularen says behind her.  

She straightens her back. “Coming, Colonel,” she calls coolly. If she’s wrong, she’ll adjust. Somehow. She takes a steady breath. She always adjusts. Somehow.

~~

The meeting goes exactly as she hoped, and at the end she has her opportunity. A feint is only worth the effort if the second intention is carried though, and she intends to carry through.

“May I have a moment, Admiral? In private?” She asks as they are all leaving. The room stills, heads turn. There are only five people in the room besides herself and all of them look at her.

“Of course, Governor,” says Thrawn. “Faro, Vanto, I will meet you on the bridge.”

Yularen hesitates a moment longer than the rest, but leaves without comment.

~~

Asking people to discuss their motives is a dangerous game. More often than not it just reminds them they ought not to be helping you, and the rest of the time it leaves you disappointed. Arihnda has known for a long time now that personal motives are often the least valuable and most troublesome means to an end. Personal interests are reliable — personal motives are not. She knows better than to try. She has a plan to appeal to his interests.

She remembers her father lifting her in his arms, so she could see over the safety rail in a refining facility. She was four, maybe five.

Better wisdom notwithstanding, an unplanned question tumbles out of her mouth before she can stop herself. “Why did you come? To Gilroy Plaza?”

She thinks the little tilt of his head might pass for surprise. There is a moment of — hesitation? “You asked,” he says.

“I was nobody,” she says, as if she cannot stop herself from following this thread now that she has started tugging at it. Perhaps this is something she has always wanted to know. “I was nobody and my message didn’t even give a hint of what I was on about. You didn’t — you had to  _ start  _ our conversation by asking what I wanted. I didn’t tell you anything. You didn’t know me. You came anyway. Why?”

There is a silence. He is studying her. “You asked,” he says again. He pauses. “And I did know you. I had a sense of you, from the Alisandre, and from Yinchom. I felt —” he breaks off here, eying her warily. “Suffice it to say that as a general matter of principle, I believe it is usually best to try and help where one can.”

She is gripping the back of the chair, holding herself up with it. 

“You’ve been in the Empire for a few years more, now,” she says. The casual tone of her voice is transparently false. “Do you still believe that?”

“Perhaps less than I once did,” he admits. “But in theory — yes.”

She remembers her mother pinning her hair up before an hydraulophone recital. She was ten — no, nine. 

“And if I asked for your help with something else?”

Those unnerving red eyes stay on her, narrow, watching. “Your parents live in Paeregosto City, do they not?” He says. He doesn't wait for a response. “I thought that was perhaps why you insisted on this ridiculous charade.”

“Are you —”

“Yes, I will send someone for them.” 

She digs her fingers into the chair. Her knuckles are white. She forces a shallow breath into her chest, out again. 

“Because I asked.”

“Because you asked,” he agrees. “Your kind find it quite difficult to ask for help, I have noticed,” he says. Whether he means  _ Imperials  _ generally or something more specific about Arihnda’s character does not bear examination. “You are always worried about what will be asked of you in return,” he continues. “Instead of looking for mutual benefit, you seem always to look for mutual harm. At best, you look for mutual exploitation. I believe it is because you are focused on personal advancement, rather than filling a role that serves the whole. It is not valuable for… preserving the strength of a society.” 

Her fingers are still wrapped tightly around the chair. “Am I part of your society, then, Admiral?”

“Yes.” He says it without reserve. Then: “It would be far safer for you to remain here. Are you sure you could not be persuaded?”

She shakes her head.

“Of course not,” he continues. “You have no legitimate reason for being here other than the value you can provide to Colonel Yularen and the ISB. Redirecting Imperial resources in the middle of a military operation for a purely personal matter would be too presumptuous, even for you — especially when you career still rests on Tarkin’s personal approval.” He considers her for a moment. “This is almost-well planned on your part, considering. Congratulations.”

She unclasps her hands from the back of the chair, ignoring the dig “My parents —”

“I know where they are. I suppose you believe this would work best if you were able to speak with them first, and explain the situation? In case they are not, as you hope, loyal to the Empire.”

“Something like that, yes.”

“And you have a plan for separating Gudry and your parents, I suppose?”

“I do.”

“Perhaps you should share it with me.”

She pulls the chair out and sits in it. Thrawn sits across from her. She is leaning forward when she begins to speak, then suddenly laughs. It’s the hysterical titter of the recently reprieved. “This really  _ is  _ Gilroy Plaza all over,” she says.

“I can find a cloak and glasses if you would like to complete the reenactment.”

His voice is very dry, but — “That was a joke?”

“I am glad that you recognized it. Tell me your plan, Governor.”

She does. He dislikes it, offers a suggestion. She disagrees, offers a counter-suggestion. They go on like this, until he is looking at her with grudging confidence. 

“This would work better if Agent Gudry and Colonel Yularen were apprised of the full situation,” Thrawn says.

“Do you think Gudry really has his orders from Yularen?” She asks. “You know Creekpath has a doonium vein. You know the sorts of people with an interest in it.”

Thrawn considers this for a long moment. “Yes,” he says. “Although I must point out to you that this greatly increases the danger to you personally. I feel compelled to reiterate my objection to your leaving this ship at all.”

“I appreciate that, Admiral.”

“I should also like to remind you that any interference in his plans might cause political problems for you.”

“I think those problems will fall on Colonel Yularen before they fall on me. In Creekpath, Gudry and I will technically be operating under his authority, I believe.”

Thrawn raises his eyebrows, not with approval. “I see. And when this is over you can explain all of that to Colonel Yularen, or not, at your discretion, I suppose.”

“Yes. I certainly don’t want him interfering  _ now.  _ If Wullf decides I’m not such a nice friend after this, I can deal with it then.”

~~

Against all odds, but like most plans Thrawn has a hand in, Arihnda’s little operation runs as smoothly as a well-rehearsed ballet. 

She separates from Gudry in the mine, returns her father to her parent’s apartment, and by hook, crook, and a bit of exasperated shouting, persuades them to play their parts.

As she explains the situation, as much of it as she can, Talmoor stops speaking. Arihnda is troubled by this, but not overly so. She can talk to him later. He doesn’t have to love the Empire, as long as he’s alive.

The plan is this: Arihnda’s parents, leaving all their worldly possessions behind, will proceed out of the mining complex as if they are headed to Paeregosto City. Once outside the perimeter, they will proceed to an abandoned field, well-shielded by natural embankments. In the field, a small shuttlecraft and a five-man extraction team will be waiting. Her parents will board the craft and be taken to the Chimaera, where they will wait in relative safety and comfort while Thrawn, having already fished some of the rebels from the sea, wipes the rest of them from the land and the sky.

Arihnda herself will return to the mine, meet Gudry, and help him assess the rest of the facility. Then, the two of them will proceed out of the mining complex as previously planned, and rejoin Yularen at ground command. When ordered by the Navy, they will disable the rebels shield, which Gudry will have tied to Signal One of his comm.

Almost all of this occurs without undue trouble. She knows that her parents, with Talmoor a familiar face to all the employees, will exit Creekpath with no trouble. She trusts that, however disgusted he may be with the situation, he will not risk Elainye’s safety and by giving away the impending imperial advance dragging them into the rebel’s fight. 

She and Gudry encounter minimal trouble in the mines. He kills one guard, but Arihnda finds she is not bothered by this in the least.

Their exit from the facility is a tricky thing, but stealth and charm, skillfully applied, let them slip through.

The changes don’t begin until they are outside the perimeter.

Instead of proceeding to their speeder, Gudry stops in a shadowed ditch, and crouches down.

Arihnda turns. “What are you doing?” She hisses.

“Following my orders, Governor,” Gudry whispers back.

“Our orders are to rendezvous with Colonel Yularen, describe the mine and its contents, and disable the rebels’ shield,” she says.

“Those are the orders Yularen thinks he gave,” says Gudry.

Arihnda stares at him. Being proven correct about him is less than cold comfort. Perhaps Thrawn was right; she should have stayed on the Chimaera.

She thinks of her mother teaching her to braid her hair. She was six.

“The Admiral is expecting that shield to go down,” she says.

“I have orders from Orson Krennic,” says Gudry.

Arihnda looks at the lights of Creekpath, the brighter lights of Paeregosto City beyond. 

Krennic. It’s a name she barely knows, some over-promoted paper-pusher from weapons development with an outsized ego and a bad reputation. From what she knows of him, and what she’s seen of Gudry, she suspects Krennic’s so-called orders were delivered along with a fat, untraceable payment of credits.

She thinks of her father taking her into a mine for the first time. She was seven. 

Somewhere behind them, Yularen is waiting for them to tell his troops where to go inside Creekpath, what to look for, what to avoid.

“What orders are those?” She asks, creeping closer.

Gudry looks at her over his shoulder. Perhaps he feels that they are kindred spirits. Several times in the evening he has complimented her skills at reconnaissance, in dissembling, for stealth and observation. Perhaps that is why he shares the truth with her. “The rebels are to be destroyed,” he says.

Arihnda stops. 

She thinks of her mother baking Corellian Ryshcate for her twelfth birthday, and of her father introducing her to Alderaanian wine.

She thinks, for the first time in a long time, of the sunset on Lothal. She thinks, suddenly, of Juahir, writing and writing from a prison cell.

She thinks of the way her father fell silent when she explained that she had come to Creekpath to assist the ISB and the Imperial Navy.

She thinks of Thrawn, somewhere above them, waiting for the shield to come down. 

No kriffing Orson Krennic is going to ruin her bloody plans.

Gudry fishes his comm out of a jacket pocket. 

Arihnda is on him in a second.

Grappling was never her strength. She’s always been best as a striker, whether with legs or hands. But she’s never been a quitter. She and Gudry twist in the dirt, spitting and trading tight, brutal blows. The comm has been knocked out of his hand, and has skittered several feet away. Gudry rolls on top of Arihnda and lands a nasty punch on the side of her head; she brings her arms up to shield herself, bucks her hips and twists sideways. Gudry lands a knee in her ribs and she answers with a sharp left hook to his temple. She twists again, wriggles out from under him, gets halfway up and lunges towards the comm. If nothing else, she can hit the trigger for the shield and then break it. Gudry grabs her ankle yanks her towards him. She flips onto her back, ready to land another blow against his skull, when she feels the blaster pressed into her stomach.

“That’s enough,” Gudry growls. 

Arihnda takes a breath, then another. It’s hard to perceive things clearly through the fog of adrenaline and fear and anger.

“I would hate to kill Moff Tarkin’s pet governor,” Gudry continues, “but I will if I have to.”

Arihnda thinks, oddly, of Hasishi. Hasishi, who had taught her how to take a blow and give one back, who had given her the tools not to be a hapless, helpless victim of Coruscanti street thugs.

And that’s all Gudry is, Arihnda decides.

Seething, she strikes him fast in the throat, and grabs for the blaster. Gagging, Gudry pulls back, tries to recover his grip too slowly. Something white-hot rips through Arihnda’s middle as she wrenches the blaster from him and turns it around, but she doesn’t have time to think about it. As soon as she feels the trigger under her finger she fires, and fires again, and again, until she recovers herself enough to realize that Gudry is really, truly, not ever going to get up.

Arihnda sits in the dirt at the edge of the ditch. Her head hurts where Gudry punched her, and one of her legs is badly sprained at the knee. She can’t feel her middle. Slowly, hands shaking, she puts down the blaster, turns, and pushes herself up onto her knees. She is shaking too badly to support herself. She lays down. She looks for Gudry’s comm. It’s still there, in the dirt. She crawls towards it. Her body responds wrongly, somehow, to everything, but her hurts feel far away, and she manages to cover the distance. Gudry’s comm is just within reach. Fingertips scrabbling in the dirt, she pulls it to her, then reaches into a pocket with her left hand and pulls out her own comm. It’s wet. She feels dizzy. She rolls onto her back. She keys her comm. For Yularen, or Thrawn? She can’t recall. One or the other of them, it hardly matters. Her fingers move automatically.

“Governor Pryce?” A soft, accented voice comes through the comm.

She tries to speak, and coughs instead. She blinks at the night sky. “Here,” she manages.

There is a pause. “What happened?”

“I can disable the shield,” she says. She looks at the comm in her hand. It’s wet with something dark. “But I think I have to do it now.”

There is another, longer pause. Too long.

“Hello?” she says.

“I understand.” She likes the calm, even tone of his voice. “You may disable the shield whenever you are ready, Governor.”

She looks into the dark. Her parents are there, somewhere. Her father will admire the way Thrawn goes about his work, even if he does not admire the work. Her father has always been like that. And her mother — he will make her mother feel at ease, she hopes. He’s capable of such elegant manners, when he tries. She thinks he will try.

“Arihnda?” he says. She likes his voice very much.

“Yes,” she says. In her right hand, Gudry’s comm is gritty with dry soil. Her legs are cold. She closes her eyes. 

She presses her finger down on the first key.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean, I had to do it to her at least once.
> 
> Thrawn (2017) canon only need apply. 
> 
> So: obviously I had to reread the Gilroy Plaza scene becuase I wasn't sure I remembered it correctly, but, uh. I did. He just..... fuckin'.......... comes when she calls. (It's almost like it was designed to make me ship it.) ((Plz someone write the NC-17 fic where they meet in a hotel room and not a diner.))


	3. Set Regrets Aside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I did, during this section of the book, find myself wondering why the hell the Navy didn't have a better-planned extraction operation in place. And what happened to that beck-and-call...
> 
> Arihnda lives, but her heart takes a beating.

_"The situation on the ground is often more complex than it appears from orbit." — Mitth'raw'nuruodo_

 

 

 

“I know I can count on you for instant assistance if there’s trouble,” Arihnda says generously.

  
“Indeed you can,” says Thrawn. He shifts in his chair and takes something out of a pocket.

  
Eli recognizes it: Thrawn’s old Lieutenant’s insignia plaque, the one modified to be a beck-and-call.

  
“In fact,” Thrawn continues, “I will begin now.”

  
The other officers at the table exchange glances. Eli does his best to telegraph _I have no idea, either_ to Yularen without moving his eyebrows too dramatically.

  
Arihnda is watching Thrawn. “You aren’t going to suggest I go in disguise as an officer of the Imperial Navy?” Her voice is forcedly light; no one, least of all Arihnda, believes that Thrawn would suggest any such thing.

  
“No.” Thrawn is turning the plaque in his hands. “I was not.” He looks steadily at Arihnda as he speaks. “This is an old rank insignia of mine. I modified it once to function as a beck-and-call, and have since found it useful in that capacity in several situations. I hope you will not think me overly presumptuous, Governor, but I have modified it for you to suit the present circumstance. It now serves two purposes. First, it is half of a cloaked binary beacon. Second, if necessary, you may use it to transmit a distress signal.” He holds the little plaque out for her. “It is still, in principle, a beck-and-call. Just slightly more… refined.”

  
After a brief hesitation Arihnda takes it from him, gingerly. “Who does it call, exactly?” she asks, looking at the thing in her fingers. Beside her, Yularen is also looking at the beacon, frowning. “The other half of the beacon,” she continues, “the receiver?”

  
“Me, of course,” Thrawn says. Arihnda and Yularen look up in tandem. Thrawn taps the Admiral’s insignia on his chest gently. “The receiver,” he says, with a wry curve in his lips.

  
Arihnda raises her eyebrows. “You’re going to drop everything in the middle of operations and rush to my rescue if I need help?” she says caustically.

  
“If required,” he says dryly, “but I believe it will be perfectly convenient to assign an extraction team, should the need arise. Consider it an extra precaution should you be captured and your communicators taken from you, or should you need emergency assistance for any other reason and find yourself unable to communicate through more normal channels. I would only remind you that the assistance won’t be instant, per se, although it can be called without alerting anyone of your intentions.”

  
Arihnda looks at the small insignia. It fits neatly into the curve of her palm; she could conceal it almost anywhere. “How do I activate it?”

  
“Press any of the buttons,” he says. “I thought it best not to make it too fickle, in case you are otherwise occupied when using it.”

  
“If using it,” she corrects, inspecting the beacon more closely. “May I?” She asks, holding out a hand without looking up. “Do you mind?”

  
“Please,” he allows, unpinning his rank insignia from his chest and passing it to her.

  
Eli frowns. There's an ease in the exchange that he doesn't understand. As far as he knows, Thrawn has only spoken to Arihnda Pryce three times, including this one. Eli was present each time and aside from this none amounted to much more than a polite hello. But, now… Turning events over in his mind, he starts to see something: a kind of rhythmic back and forth in Thrawn’s promotions and Arihnda’s successes, and vice-versa. A pattern, and Eli knows he’s missing part of it. His frown deepens.

  
Across the table, Arihnda curls her hands gently around the two plaques: the lieutenant's in her left, and the other in her right. She squeezes her left hand, and from the way her shoulders suddenly straighten, Eli knows the beacons work just fine. She looks up and clears her throat. “Do they need to be reset in any way?”

  
“Yes,” Thrawn says. “Allow me.”

  
Arihnda reaches across the table, returning both insignia. Thrawn takes them gently from her outstretched hands, does something to each, and returns the smaller one to her.

  
“I appreciate your concern for my safety, Admiral,” she says. Her voice is measured, but Eli thinks she sounds sincere.

  
“Of course, Governor,” Thrawn says, affixing his insignia to his uniform. “It’s my pleasure to be of assistance. I believe Colonel Yularen and Commander Vanto can coordinate the rest of the support you and Agent Gudry might need. Commander Faro and I should, if you will permit us, proceed to the bridge.”

  
“Of course,” says Arihnda.

  
Faro, exchanging slightly confused glances with Yularen and Eli, rises as Thrawn does, and follows him. At the door, Thrawn stops abruptly and turns back to the table. “I wish you success, Governor,” he says. “Be cautious, and be safe.”

  
In over a decade of serving with the man, Eli has never heard Thrawn say anything of the sort to anyone. He locks his jaw to save himself the trouble of needing to scrape it off the floor. For a moment, Faro looks like she might choke. Yularen has the same, strange, considering look he’s had throughout. Somehow, and Eli is determined to ask him about it, the ISB Colonel is the least surprised of anyone.

  
“Thank you, Admiral,” Arihnda says slowly. “I will be.” Eli has the sense that she has never done either a safe or a cautious thing in her life. “I look forward to reporting to Moff Tarkin on your success, as well.”

  
Tarkin. Eli remembers Tarkin at the convening where Thrawn had been promoted to Commodore, where Eli had received his own staggering, rank-jumping promotion. He’d been so bowled over by the change in his own status he’d barely paid attention, but hadn’t Tarkin said something to Thrawn about Arihnda? How had Thrawn responded? Eli is still frowning, not paying attention as Thrawn replies to Arihnda, as Yularen and Thrawn exchange some final word, as Thrawn and Faro leave.

  
Yularen calls Eli back to himself. “Commander Vanto, shall we?”

  
Eli is too consumed with trying to retrofit his understanding of Thrawn, too busy trying to see how this hawk-faced woman with her keen, quick eyes and hard, hungry mouth fits into a puzzle Eli believed he’d already solved. He blinks stupidly, and looks around. Agent Gudry is impassive, only the faintest trace of irritation on his face. Whatever he thought of the Governor’s plan before, he clearly thinks less of it now. Arihnda has recomposed herself completely, and is looking at him with cool expectation. Yularen raises his eyebrows.

  
“Ah, of course Colonel. Governor, if you and Agent Gudry want to follow the Colonel and me to comms, we can get you outfitted with what you need.”

  
As they rise from the conference table, Eli sees Governor Pryce slip the beacon away inside her shirt. She tugs at the fabric briefly, afterward, making sure the plaque is well-concealed.

  
~~

  
Getting the Governor and the ISB Agent off and running goes smoothly enough. Still, Eli feels the whatever-it-was-that-just-happened hanging in the air around him. He’s relieved when he and Yularen are finally alone.

  
“What was in kriffing hell that?” Eli asks without preamble.

  
Yularen turns to him. “Confirmation of my suspicions, I think.”

  
“Suspicions of what? They barely know each other.”

  
“Nonsense. She made his career.”

  
Eli looks at him curiously. “How do you mean?”

  
“She was working for High Skies — “

  
“That I vaguely I remember,” says Eli. “I knew that made her career, but what’s that got to with Thrawn?”

  
“She brought them to Thrawn first. He advised her on the matter, as I understand it, and in turn she asked Moff Tarkin to take an interest in his career. And yours.”

  
The revelation that Arihnda Pryce is responsible for the rescue of Eli’s career from the pit of stagnation in which it had languished should pique his interest, but he’s too busy trying to absorb the idea that Thrawn might have had another close relationship, an ally, a friend, even, and that he kept her a secret — Eli stops himself. It’s a strange, jealous way to think. But for years he’d felt they were, whether Eli liked it or not, a two-man team, just them against the world. He feels betrayed, somehow. At best, he feels foolish.

  
“Anyway,” Yularen continues, “I’ve always wondered about the nature of their… rapport. She’s bold as hell but even so people weren’t exactly clamoring for Thrawn’s personal attention at that point in his career. I suspected — I always wondered if she wasn’t…” Yularen coughs, embarrassed. “Well, women have all kinds of appetites. But I could never understand what he saw in her.”

  
Eli ignores the innuendo; Yularen’s always been a little tight-laced. “You think he feels indebted to her?” He asks.

  
“No,” Yularen says. “Not at all. Even if he did, recommending that the outer rim fleet be stationed in Lothal — Did you know he’d done that for her? No? Well, now you do — would have evened that out. But I don’t think that was his reason for that, either.”

  
“You think he’s…” Eli struggles to find the right word. Finally, he settles on something that doesn’t seem entirely ludicrous. “You think he feels… he’s fond of her?”

  
“I certainly hope that he is.”

  
“Wh — Why?”

  
“Because she’s a damn stupid choice of political ally if that’s all it is,” Yularen says, quite somber. “Lothal is teetering on the brink of chaos because she’s too bloody merciless. She’s got no friends on Coruscant, either, for the same damn reason. Thrawn’s way of coming at things is too genteel by half for her, I think. But if they’ve got a sentimental attachment to each other…”

  
“She...” Eli struggles again, sticks to the same phrasing. “She’s fond of him too, you think?”

  
“I wouldn’t have thought it before today,” Yularen says. “But I’ve never seen her so genuinely grateful for anything.” Yularen hums softly. “Thrawn comes off as cold, sometimes —”

  
“He’s not,” says Eli defensively. A reflex.

  
Yularen smiles. “No, of course not. He just looks that way sometimes, is all. But she is, I was going to say. Like Tarkin, with half the brains and none of the subtlety. Wouldn't have thought her capable of loving a pet, even. It’s just — I wonder if your commander doesn’t have a bit of savior complex. Just can't imagine what it is about her he thinks worth saving.”

  
~~

  
When Arihnda finally convinces her parents to start packing, she presses a hand to her chest, gently, easing the knot there. She feels the outline of the Lieutenant’s plaque nestled against the side of her breast, and leaves her hand on her chest, fingers lightly pressed into the sharp plastic edge of the beck-and-call. She looks to the stairs. She can hear her mother and father arguing about what to bring.

  
Her mother will want to bring everything, of course. She’s always been like that. She gets attached so easily. It had been almost impossible to make her leave Lothal, even after her life had crumbled into dust. She was so attached.

  
If she could, Arihnda would scoop up the whole house and all her mother’s silly trinkets in both hands and carry it away herself. They have given her so much, her parents, loved her so dearly, and the two most meaningful things Arihnda has ever done for them have uprooted them entirely. First from Lothal, now from Batonn.

  
She should have brought them home ages ago, but she's been so busy. And they seemed almost happy here, despite everything. They'd built a life they could be happy with, she'd thought. She runs a fingertip against the edge of the plaque, which sticks up slightly beneath the fabric of her shirt. She should have brought them home anyway, she thinks.

  
If she could, Arihnda would step back in time and strangle Ryder Azadi with her bare hands before letting him imprison her mother. She’s done so much to right that wrong in the years since, so much to punish everyone involved, but she is still, like an animal on a track, back at the beginning, asking her parents to uproot their lives and flee.

  
And this time what she’s asking of them is so dangerous. She had tied Domus Renking’s hands before, forced him to grant Elainye’s freedom after Azadi had taken it, traded everything for it, but she can’t tie the hands of every rebel in Creekpath.

  
The beck-and-call is hard against her flesh, sharp under her fingertips.

  
Perhaps she doesn’t need to tie anyone’s hands at all.  


Thrawn had given it to her, and what had he said? _I hope you will not think me overly presumptuous —_ he must have known, somehow. He had not been surprised by her arrival. He always seemed to know everything. _I have modified it for you._ If he had anticipated her arrival, perhaps he had anticipated her reasons, as well.

  
“Make sure you bring Arihnda’s recital tapes,” she hears her mother saying, “and the school pictures.”

  
Arihnda makes her decision. She slips the plaque out of her shirt.

  
Her mother comes down the stairs carrying a stack of data cards. “Arihnda —”

  
“Mother, I need you to take this,” she says, holding out the plaque. Her mother stops.  
“What is it?”

  
Talmoor comes down the stairs behind her, another stack of data cards in his hand.

  
“It’s a beacon,” says Arihnda.  


  
“What for?” Asks her mother. Talmoor comes up behind her, looking curiously at the plaque.

  
“I told you there was a fleet detachment here,” says Arihnda. “The commander gave me this, to signal for help if I — it’s to let him know if I need to be extracted.” Her parents both give a strange start at the word ‘extracted.’ One does not ask the Imperial Navy for an extraction from a secret, private trip to see a rebel sympathizer. Arihnda presses on. “It’s to get me safely back to the fleet, if there’s an emergency.”

  
Talmoor looks at her. He looks as if there were a veil between them and he cannot resolve the shape of her face through it.

  
“I want you to take it,” Arihnda continues. “I’m going to… I want you to use it. I want you to take it and after I leave, signal, please. Then just stay here and wait.”

  
“Arihnda…” Her mother understands the unspoken part of it, but she doesn’t know how to put it into words, and therefore cannot challenge it.

  
Talmoor is less reserved. “And you’re going to find Mattai? Or whatever his name is?”  
Arihnda hesitates. “Yes,” she says. “His name is Gudry. He’s an ISB agent.”

  
Elainye gasps. Talmoor closes his eyes and shakes his head.

  
“I’ll keep him away from here,” Arihnda rushes on, “I promise. Nothing will happen to you. And you’ll use this. A special operations team can get you quietly. It’s safer this way, I’m sure of it.”

  
“If you and your... operative… need to be extracted,” Talmoor says slowly, choosing his words with careful reserve, “what exactly is he doing, in the mines, Arihnda? Why are you really here?”

  
“You said you’re not with the rebels,” Arihnda says to him. “You don’t need to worry about any of it.”

  
“That doesn’t mean I approve of —”

  
“Arihnda,” her mother cuts Talmoor off, “you have to come with us, too.”

  
“But you won't, will you, Arihnda?” asks Talmoor. He is looking at Arihnda with a kind of sad distance in his eyes. “You and Agent Gudry have important work to do. Don’t you?”

  
Arihnda curls her free hand into a tight fist, ignoring the exhausted disappointment in her father’s tone, and forces herself to stay focused on the task at hand. She will make her parents do as she needs. She always has before.

  
“Father,” Arihnda says, voice less controlled than she would like, “you have to listen —”

  
“I’ve tried not to believe the things my friends have been telling me about Lothal,” says Talmoor. “And about what happened to Governor Azadi. I see I was wrong.” His voice is filled with disgust.

  
“Azadi was going to let mother _rot_ in a prison cell for the rest of her life!” Arihnda’s voice cracks. “I’m the one who forced Renking to go around him and give you your lives back. _I did that._ I’ve made sure no one can ever — what I did to Azadi I did for you!”

  
“We didn’t ask you to,” says Talmoor coldly.

  
Arihnda flinches as if he’d slapped her. He must have heard a great deal from Lothal. Then she recovers her pride. “You can believe whatever horrible things about me you want,” she says at last. “But you’ve always listened to me, and right now I am telling you that you need to —”

  
“Enough!” cries Elainye, palms pressed to her temples. “Enough,” she says again, shaking her head. She reaches for Arihnda’s hand and takes the beacon. “That’s enough. Arihnda, promise me you won’t…” She swallows, and holds up the beacon. “Arihnda, promise if we use this the people who come for us won’t kill our neighbors.”

  
Arihnda closes her eyes, shakes her head. “I can’t control that.”

  
“Then we won’t go,” says Talmoor darkly.

Arihnda opens her eyes to look at him, and finds her vision is blurred with tears.

  
“I came here for you,” she says, finally. It comes out in a voice she barely recognizes. It's almost a question, and she thinks she sounds smaller than she has in years — and she feels small, too, smaller than she ever remembers feeling in her life. It's worse than being drugged by Ghadi, or abandoned by Renking, or used by Juahir. “I am risking everything I have to be here, for you. Don’t you — can’t you see that?”

  
“Of course we do,” says Elainye gently, taking a sudden step towards her only child, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Of course we do. We just —”

  
“You should go,” says Talmoor.

  
“Talmoor,” Elainye gasps.

  
Arihnda takes a deep, sharp breath, and steps back.

  
She knows they won’t use the beacon on their own.

  
She doesn’t permit herself to focus on anything else.

  
She swallows her anger and her tears and holds out her hand, mustering all the overbearing attitude of command she can. After a brief hesitation, her mother hands over the beacon. Arihnda presses it viciously and tosses it aside.

  
“I hope you don’t throw away what I’ve just done for you,” she says, smothering the tremor in her voice beneath a sheet of ice. “And I hope you realize that if you resist, or if you involve your neighbors in resisting, the Imperial troops will respond with all necessary force.” Then she turns on her heel and leaves.

  
“Arihnda, —” Elainye calls after her.

Arihnda does not turn around. She opens a comms channel to Gudry before she makes it out the door.

~~

  
Thrawn offers, as usual, a perfectly reasonable explanation for the most outrageous behavior. Yularen has never particularly enjoyed these expositions, and he enjoys Thrawn’s reasons for speaking with Nightswan least of all. Still, the reasons are sound, as they always are. He holsters his blaster and looks off towards the lights of Paeregosto City.

  
“Pity you didn’t get him to surrender.”

  
“Indeed,” says Thrawn. “Still, we —” he stops. Yularen looks back at him. Thrawn is also, now, looking at the lights of the distant city, a strange expression on his face. His hand is pressed to his chest, covering his rank insignia.

  
“Shall I detach a special duty unit?” Yularen asks.

  
Thrawn does not move his hand. “I had hoped not to have this happen,” he says, finally. Then he removes the insignia plaque from his uniform and hands it to Yularen. It thrums every few seconds, sending out a brief pulse of warmth and an odd, bass-like sensation. It is unsettling, like holding a slowly beating heart.

“I will return to the Chimaera,” says Thrawn. “I wish your ground forces the best of luck.” He hesitates, then: “Please have Governor Pryce brought aboard the Chimaera as soon as possible, Colonel.”

  
“Yes, Admiral,” says Yularen.

  
~~

  
Arihnda meets Gudry at the entrance to the mine. She updates him briefly. “We won’t need my father. I know how to get us out.” Her voice is only slightly hoarse.

  
Gudry takes in the blotchy coloring of her face and decides not to comment. “How are you going to do that?” he asks instead.

  
“Just follow me. Give me your extra blaster.”

  
Gudry raises his eyebrows. “Not afraid to use it, are you?”

  
“No,” she says, quite clearly.

  
Their way out is mostly quiet. Gudry is impressed with her cool focus and physical competence.

  
He’s most impressed by the thing that happens when they are almost free, something that happens on a nearly unpatrolled stretch of perimeter beyond which Gudry should be able to call for an airlift.

  
A handsome man pushing the far side of middle age, carrying a single blaster, sets down a speeder in front of them and jumps out, making a line for them. He has an air of command, the confidence of a person who expects to be greeted as a leader. Gudry won’t know who he is until later, when Yularen reports that Nightswan was found dead at the edge of the mining complex.

  
But what happens in the short term tells him a great deal about Pryce.

  
“Do you two need help?” The man striding towards them asks. What he really means is _who are you, and you better have a good excuse for being here._

  
Pryce doesn’t bother with the pleasantries. “No, thank you,” she says with professional brusqueness. As she says it, she raises the blaster and fires, a single shot through the center of the man’s chest.

  
The man stops, stumbles, sways. Falls to his knees, falls to his side. Gudry has seen enough death to know he won’t be getting up again.

  
Arihnda does not even wait to see the man hit his knees. She is past him and into his speeder before he slumps sideways onto the grass.  
Gudry has to run to catch up to her.

  
“Will the triggers in your communicator work from the Chimaera or do we need to take you to ground command?” she asks without looking at him as he vaults into the speeder beside her. Her voice is cool and blank, like smooth stone.

  
“Ground command,” he says after catching his breath.

  
She engages the speeder’s engine and spins the ship like a pod-racer. As they accelerate into the night, she opens a comms channel to Colonel Yularen.

  
“Colonel,” she says, still with that calm, water-smooth stone of a voice, as if she were a droid and not a woman, “did the Admiral receive my beacon? Have you dispatched an extraction unit?”

  
“Ah, yes, Governor,” Yularen’s voice crackles across the line, surprise evident. “Should we tell them to turn back?”

  
“No, please. But please update the squad leader that they are extracting two elderly citizens, Talmoor and Elainye Pryce. Tell them if the gentleman resists, they are to crack him on the head and bring him anyway.”

  
There is a long silence. “Of course, Governor,” said Yularen. “We await your and Agent Gudry’s report at Ground Command.”

  
~~

  
Ground Command is a flurry of activity. Yularen greets them at the door. Arihnda breezes past him to view the tactical. Gudry and Yularen exchange a few words, and then Yularen steps to Arihnda’s side.

  
“Governor,” he says softly, watching her face closely as if looking for something, “the Admiral requested that you return to the Chimaera as quickly as possible.”

  
“Did he?” Arihnda asks without interest. This gives Yularen a half a second’s pause.

  
“Yes,” he ventures. “I also believe it would be the safest place during our assault.”

  
“Everyone is so concerned with my _safety_ today, Colonel." Arihnda says it as if she were critiquing a bad joke.

  
Yularen frowns at her. “Yes, I believe the Admiral is particularly concerned,” he offers gently, “since you engaged the beacon. I have updated him about the… status… of that operation, but I believe he would still appreciate your presence ship-side.”

  
Slowly, she turns her cold and piercing eyes on him. They have a unsettling, red-rimmed quality Yularen has never seen before.

  
“I would prefer to watch the progress of operations from here, Colonel,” she says coldly. “Unless you are going to have me forcibly removed to the Chimaera?”

  
Yularen hesitates. “I would prefer not to,” he confesses.

  
“No? Well, I suppose that's that, then,” she says flatly. She turns her eyes back to the tactical.


	4. An Automatic Response

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In case it wasn't clear, they are arranged from the most plausible to the... less plausible. I always kind of wanted Eli to get a closer look at Arihnda, so I tried to give him one.

_"[The] goal of the [soldier in the field] is to carry out their appointed mission or their appointed task, and trust that their commanders are aware of the larger situation." — Mitth'raw'nuruodo_

 

 

 

“As I am sure Governor Pryce is prepared to remind me, Paeregosto City is not a full military zone, which limits my authority over her actions. However,” Thrawn says, barreling along before Governor Pryce can cut him off, “if you are amenable, Colonel Yularen, I would ask that she take at least one member of my crew as extra security.”

Governor Pryce glances at Yularen, who does not step in quickly enough. “If it will put your mind at ease, Admiral,” she says in his place, “I am happy to oblige.”

“May I suggest Commander Vanto? I believe he has sufficient experience in undercover operations.”

Eli tries to keep his face neutral; he tries not to notice the small, ironic twist in Governor Pryce’s lips. He hadn’t particularly enjoyed being around this woman either of the two times they’d met. She was one of those Coruscanti climbers who would stab you in the back just to stand a little higher by stepping on your corpse.

“I am sure anyone you trust is someone I can trust, Admiral,” she says, all polished pleasantness, like a well-mannered asp. “I assume Commander Vanto is prepared to coordinate with Colonel Yularen on the rest of our little operation?”

“He is,” says Thrawn. “He will show you and Agent Gudry to communications, if you would be so kind as to follow him. Commander Vanto, if you could be sure that encrypted frequencies are available for the Governor to communicate with both myself and Colonel Yularen, I should be most grateful.”

“Sir,” says Eli.

~~

Thrawn joins them in communications just as Eli puts the finishing touches on their comms. Alone among the communicators, Governor Pryce’s has been modified with an extremely complex cloaked tracking beacon. Eli would have preferred trackers on all of the comms, but unsecured beacons are out of the question and cloaked ones are tricky bastards to set up, especially under limited time. 

“Commander Vanto, are you ready?” Comes the voice from behind him. Eli turns smartly and gives a quick salute.

“Sir,” he says, “we have three encrypted comms, and Senior Lieutenant Lomar will monitor the Governor’s position for the duration of the mission.” 

“Excellent as ever, Vanto,” says Thrawn. “And if you would, Vanto, a word before you depart.”

“Yes, sir,” says Eli tightly.

He steps into the hall behind Thrawn, while Yularen speaks with Gudry. Pryce is reading something on a datapad; she looks the very picture of unconcern.

“Governor Pryce is not here,” Thrawn says when they are out of earshot, “I assume you have guessed, to help the ISB.”

“A politician with a private agenda? Color me shocked.”

“Yes,” says Thrawn. “I suspect Governor Pryce is insisting on this suicidal stunt because she intends to extract her parents from Creekpath on her own.”

Thrawn gives Eli a moment to absorb this. Eli needs the moment.

“She’s…”

“Yes,” says Thrawn before Eli stumbles to the end of his sentence. “Unfortunately, I believe she may be slightly overestimating her abilities.” 

“ _ Slightly _ ? Is that a joke, sir?”

Thrawn continues as if Eli had not spoken. “Gudry will likely prove troublesome. He is here, I assume, with orders from Tarkin or the Emperor —” Eli makes a startled noise — “as Creekpath is a primary producer of doonium, something of very little interest to Yularen but very great interest to our friends in the Imperial high command. I expect as well that her parents will not have any desire to leave; they are likely, by this point, to have more in common with the Rebels than with their daughter. You may leave them in Creekpath and return the Governor to the  _ Chimaera _ forcibly if necessary.”

Eli frowns. “Are you sure, sir?”

“Yes. You are to ensure that this mistake of hers does not become something much worse.”

“I understand,” says Eli, although, ignorant of certain late-night meetings and private calls, of advice instinctually requested and freely given, of recommendations unsolicited but paid back in kind, he truly doesn’t. 

“Thank you, Vanto,” says Thrawn. He turns, and Eli thinks of something.

“Sir —”

Thrawn turns back.

“If you’re sure Gudry’s here on a different mission, and you know Pryce is here for her own reasons, what about the rebel shield?”

“Excellent question, Vanto,” says Thrawn, nearly smiling. “I’m sure you’ll get a chance to see.”

~~

While Gudry flies them to Paeregosto, Eli pulls Governor Pryce aside in the back of the shuttle.

“Ma’am,” he says, soft enough that his voice won’t carry to the cockpit, “it’ll be easier for me to help you if I know how you’re planning to do this.” Pryce only looks at him with vaguely superior patience, so he pushes a little harder: “I’m guessing you have a plan, since the Admiral asked me to help with it. A plan for getting your parents out, I mean.”

A couple of emotions flicker over Pryce’s face, all ambiguous, and all quickly buried beneath the canny smugness that Eli thinks they must teach in the Imperial Palace. “Well, far be it for me to outwit the Admiral,” she says. “But if you can follow my lead, that will be enough, I’m sure. If you can follow his, you’ll have no trouble.”

It’s not exactly a compliment. “Assume I’m stupid, ma’am,” Eli says in a flat voice that hides most of his annoyance. He’s gotten good at letting people think he’s slow. It doesn’t bother him.

Pryce raises her eyebrows at him; her lips are pursed oddly, like she’s holding in a laugh. “Did you learn that from Thrawn?” Part of the laugh almost escapes; then she sobers quickly and assesses him. 

Her scrutiny makes him almost as uncomfortable as Thrawn’s long gazes used to. There’s something dead about her startling blue eyes, and her mouth makes Eli think of the sort of fierce, devouring things that live on uninhabited worlds and make ground troops nervous. He doesn’t know why Thrawn thinks she needs protecting from anyone or anything. 

Finally, Pryce makes a small and surprisingly childish moue, an expression that contrasts so bizarrely with her peremptory bureaucratic mannerisms it almost distracts Eli from his own question. Then she rattles off a quick explanation. “My father’s people will let him go anywhere. We’ll feed him a sad little line about Gudry’s dear friend who works in the mine and he’ll help get us all past the guards and into wherever we tell him we want to go. Then I’ll tell him Mother is sick, and we'll just rush home, I'm sure. Gudry will play along for his own reasons; he has his own work to do. Not for Yularen. Imperial Intelligence is a viper pit, not like the Navy.” 

It’s said derisively and the derision isn’t aimed towards the ISB. Eli feels insulted for a half a second before remembering that he’s glad he works for a branch that runs like a real profession, and not a social club where murder is the weekend sport.

“Once we get back to my parents... “ Then she hesitates, which Eli didn’t realize she knew how to do. Something less ambiguous flickers over her face. The dead film across her eyes, which Eli suddenly recognizes as a carefully cultivated mask, slips out of place and he sees the raw anxiety there, for a moment. 

_ Oh,  _ Eli thinks stupidly.  _ How would you feel if they were your kriffing parents, you dumb idiot?  _

Then Pryce shakes herself free of her moment of honesty, and, face closed again, she continues: “Once we get back to my parents, I’ll have them pack. We just have to get away from the building before Gudry comes back from the mines. As long as we move fast, we’ll be fine.”

Eli wrestles with himself for a moment, then dives: “Ma’am, what if they don’t want to go?”

The look Pryce gives him might kill a lesser man. It’s gone in an instant, but the instant is enough.

“I don’t care what they want,” she says. “They’re my parents. They’ll do as I say.”

And Eli knows that taking her back to the  _ Chimaera _ without her family will be impossible. 

~~

When they arrive back at her parent’s apartment after abandoning Gudry in the mine and Pryce tells her parents what she wants from them, they protest immediately.

Her father’s tone reminds Eli that mine operators don’t always do their jobs with gentle good humor. Talmoor’s objections also have a distinctly anti-Imperial theme. 

_ They’ll do as I say,  _ Eli hears her saying in his mind. 

With a flash of insight, or perhaps just desperation, he cuts off the arguments before they can blossom.

“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice,” he says to her parents over their protests. “If you don’t come with us quietly, we will hold you and wait for an extraction team.”

“Is that so?” asks Talmoor.  

“Yes, sir,” says Eli. “Now, I can give you my word that our commanding officer is acutely concerned with minimizing civilian casualties, and I can also give you my word that he would be more than happy to hear your concerns about Imperial governance in this sector and do whatever he can to help you, but while that’s true we both know it doesn’t matter. My orders are to return you, your wife, and Governor Pryce to our lead Destroyer alive and well, by any means necessary.” Eli pauses. “I would rather let you make your own choices, sir, but I take my orders very seriously. I hope you understand.”

Talmoor is looking at him consideringly. “And if we don’t want to go?”

“We won’t be asking your permission, sir,” says Eli.

There’s a long silence. Then Pryce, almost visibly relieved, says, gently but firmly: “Mother, start packing. Fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll help,” says Talmoor, turning towards the stairs as his wife begins climbing.

“Why don’t you stay here, sir?” Eli says. It’s not really a question. Talmoor holds Eli’s gaze for a moment, then sits down on the couch. And then, contrary to anything Eli might have expected, Pryce goes to the couch and sits beside her father. They neither look at each other nor speak, but Talmoor reaches for her hand and wraps it in both of his. After a second, she leans her head on his shoulder. She doesn’t look like a  _ Governor Pryce, _ Eli decides. She looks like a girl named Arihnda.

“Ma’am,” Eli says after a polite moment, “would you mind raising the  _ Chimaera _ ? They can trace your comm to find us.”

Arihnda straightens up and plucks her comm out of her pocket with her free hand. “Lieutenant Lomar,” she says into the comm in that clipped tone of hers. “Lieutenant Lomar, this is Governor Pryce.”

Eli allows himself a deep sigh. This might work after all.

“Governor,” Lomar’s mellow, reliable voice crackles over the comm, “are you alright?”

“Yes,” says Arihnda. “We will require a —”

The door behind Eli swings open. It’s Gudry, blaster drawn.  _ Well of course, _ Eli thinks.  _ Why the hell not? _

“Put down the comm,” Gudry says by way of greeting. Eli moves to draw his own weapon, but Gudry whips the muzzle of the blaster around and Eli puts his hands up. “Tarkin wants the Governor in one piece,” Gudry continues, “but the rest of you aren’t part of the plan, and I don’t have time to play rescue squad. So, Governor, you’ll be coming with me now. Put down the comm.”

The last thing Eli notices before Arihnda moves is that she doesn’t look in the least surprised, or even perturbed. 

She just looks angry.

Then she hurls her comm full-force at Gudry’s face.

When it hits him, he jerks back, and in that split second, Eli charges. As he tackles Gudry to the ground, he grabs the hand with the blaster and slams it once, twice, three times against the floor, as hard as he can. Gudry makes a strangled, angry noise as he drops the blaster, and draws a knee up into Eli’s crotch. Eli sees a burst of black and white and doubles into himself. Gudry rolls out from beneath Eli and scrambles to his feet, but he’s not fast enough. Arihnda, no longer seated, has followed her comm across the room, and she hits him exactly where her comm did just as he stands. 

Eli tries to catch his breath. He feels a pair of strong, warm hands on his shoulders. It’s Talmoor, pulling him upright. “Breathe,” the older man says in his ear. “Just breathe.”

Steadying himself against the floor with one hand, Eli feels his fingers brush against Gudry’s blaster. Shoving the pain away from his mind as much as he can, which is not much, he picks up the weapon and points it unsteadily at the pair in the middle of the room.

He can’t get a clear shot at Gudry without risking Arihnda. As he looks for one, he realizes he might not need to. Eli can see that she’s trained professionally, and held herself to a professional standard. Her every move is tight and focused. She’s at least a match for Gudry, maybe more. Eli finds himself lowering the blaster. There’s nothing he can do to help her, and now it seems like there’s no help she needs. 

Then Gudry catches her leg. 

She’s down and he’s on top of her in a moment, and the fight is completely different. On the ground, she’s no match for him at all.

Eli is still in a great deal of pain, too much to protest when Talmoor takes the blaster out of his hand and stands behind him. What happens next happens all at once and Eli will have to parse it out after to make sure he understands.

Talmoor speaks in a loud, calm voice. “Canary,” he says. Arihnda goes instantly limp, like a light that’s been switched off. Gudry looks up, his fist raised and poised to come smashing down onto Arihnda’s undefended skull. Talmoor fires.

When Gudry collapses, dead, on top of Arihnda, she still doesn’t move. Eli sits on the floor and stares stupidly at the mangled mess that used to be Gudry’s head. Talmoor tosses the gun aside and crosses the room quickly. He kicks Gudry’s body off of Arihnda as if he were kicking a rock or a fallen pylon, then kneels. She still doesn’t move. Eli can see Arihnda’s chest rising and falling, each breath a slow and monumental thing.

“Alright, Rinna,” Talmoor says, kneeling beside her, “you did good. You’re alright. Can you get up?”

After a moment, she nods. Talmoor takes her hand but she shakes him off. “No, I can do it,” she says. She sits up slowly and wipes the gore off her face. “Go help mother,” she says. After a moment, Talmoor rises and leaves her.

Then she stands. Eli thinks it looks like hard work, but she manages on the first try. She pushes her hair, sticky with blood, away from her face. Then, she turns to Eli. “Commander Vanto,” she says automatically, “can you help me find my comm?”

~~

On the shuttle back to the _Chimaera_ , Arihnda rebuffs a medic when he tries to look at her. She locks herself up in the bathroom with a medkit for most of the trip. If Eli in any way mistook her lack of overt response to Gudry’s death as a lack of distress, this in itself sets him straight about the matter. He’s seen young crewmen and green ensigns do this kind of thing before. It’s better to keep them busy after a trauma, but there’s nothing for Arihnda to be busy with. He thinks about checking on her when it becomes clear she’s simply using the room to avoid everyone. Then he remembers what he knows of wild animals, and thinks better of it. 

As they near the Chimaera, Talmoor turns to Eli. “What happens if they won’t give up?”

“Well, I doubt the Admiral will just start bombarding the city,” Eli says, “if that’s what you mean.”

“Is he really that interested in keeping casualties low?”

“Yes, sir,” says Eli. “He always is.”

Talmoor nods to himself, slowly. “Then I’d like to help, if he’ll talk to me. I know those mines better than anyone. Not — not because I want the Empire taking Creekpath, you understand. Just — you understand.”

“I do, sir,” says Eli.

~~

The rebel shield around Creekpath is taken down by a custom signal generator attached to Nightswan’s own speeder. Eli thinks he should ask Thrawn how many of his ploys are borrowed from Coruscanti best-sellers, but he’ll have to save the question. Yularen’s troops move on the massive complex immediately.

Talmoor stays with Eli on the bridge throughout the operation. He explains the mine to Eli, and Eli relays relevant information to Thrawn when it’s needed. It's over in less than thirteen hours, a brilliant tactical and operational success with casualties in the mere dozens.

Afterwards, the Imperial Troops discover explosive triggers in the last of the rebel munitions cache. A thorough and rapid investigation by technical officers, overseen by Senior Lieutenant Lomar, reveals that the frequencies were tied back to Gudry’s own comm.

Arihnda’s parents ask to be allowed back home to Paeregosto as quickly as possible, but Thrawn can’t let them go until the matter of Gudry’s death is settled. 

In the end, it’s Arihnda who settles it. 

~~

Eli, Thrawn, Yularen, and Faro wait in a bare conference room. A room over, Governor Pryce is on a holocall with Coruscant. She’s been on the call for a long time, and Eli is beginning to feel concerned. He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, and looks at Thrawn, who is gazing contemplatively into middle-distance.

Eli is about to say something —  _ should we be worried? how long should this take? should we check on her?  _ — when at last Arihnda joins them. 

She looks utterly drained: starched and bleached and worn. There are dark circles under her eyes, which stand out unpleasantly against the pallor of her face, and her hair, from which Eli supposes she has tried to rinse some lingering trace of Gudry’s blood, clings grotesquely to the dramatic planes of her cheeks. 

“The Empire thanks you for your service,” she says to all of them, or perhaps to none of them.

They look uncertainly around at each other. “That’s it?” Says Yularen finally.

Arihnda is leaning heavily on the table, hands around her elbows. “The Emperor —” she stops. her terror is palpable, like a cold mist. Eli swallows hard. “The Emperor,” Arihnda continues, “has expressed his… He is… disappointed with the inefficient… disappointed with the waste of time and resources devoted to this operation.”

There is a longer silence. “That’s —” Yularen sputters, trying to find something intelligent to say. “That’s absurd. That’s — what did he want us to do, blow them all up?”

As soon as he says it, an uncomfortable silence settles over them all. Finally, Thrawn speaks. “I believe that is exactly what he would have preferred. I assume Agent Gudry was acting under orders to that effect. Is that not correct, Governor Pryce?”

Arihnda does not respond, but a look of nauseous horror ripples across her face. Eli suspects it is not out of compassion for the people of Batonn. He can’t imagine what it’s like to have the Emperor tell you that you’ve disappointed him. More to the point, he doesn’t want to. A sympathetic fear squeezes at his heart.

“I suppose if Gudry’d managed it, we’d all be getting promoted for our great success at pacification,” growls Yularen darkly.

Arihnda grips her elbows tightly and takes a deep breath, nostrils flaring.

“Agent Gudry’s death was unfortunate for the Empire,” she says with forced, mechanical calm, “but it was his own fault. Moff Tarkin understands that events were… difficult to resolve cleanly. He has declined to investigate the matter further.” Eli feels a rush in his chest, the same one he feels when some stunt of Thrawn’s almost kills him, and at last minute somehow doesn’t. He understands, somehow, that Arihnda has salvaged all their careers — Yularen who let Pryce come, Thrawn who gave her extra help, Eli who let an ISB agent die. He expects there’s a cost to it. Arihnda unclasps her hands from her elbows and places her palms flat on the table before her. “Admiral Thrawn, you are to expect formal orders from the navy directing the  _ Chimaera  _ to Lothal by end of day.”

Thrawn raises his eyebrows. “At your request?”

Arihnda does not clarify that point for him. Instead, she she says: “Moff Tarkin desires that some…. Minor rebel activity on Lothal be… dealt with.” 

So this is the cost. Eli sees that it’s a punishment, for all of them. Relegated to a unstable backwater planet with only one ship, assigned to a mission that’s probably designed to fail. The threat implicit in this is evident:  _ prove you’re worth keeping, if you think you’re so clever.  _

“Colonel Yularen,” Arihnda continues in the same mechanical way, “you will accompany me back to Lothal ahead of the  _ Chimaera _ , to begin intelligence preparation of the battlefield.” 

Yularen coughs uncomfortably. “Yes, ma’am,” he says.

Eli glances at Thrawn, who is frowning slightly. Eli wonders if Thrawn feels as troubled as Eli does himself.

“May I have a private word, Governor?” Thrawn asks after a quiet moment.

“No,” Arihnda says flatly. She looks away from them, towards the far wall. “If you would all attend to your duties,” she says to the air, “I would very much like the room.”


	5. A Loyal Protector

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the most self-indulgent one of all. You know what we never got to see? Anyone finding out about Gudry's murder in a concrete way. You know what else we were denied? Arihnda being forced to confront her own level of panic about it. I had fun playing with that. Anyway, this is the one where Thrawn decides "I guess I have to fix this myself ::kanyeshrug::" after Yularen tells him that Pryce has vanished inside Creekpath. (Oh, and someone gets to tell Pryce that her expectations vis-a-vis Gudry's death are... not rational.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh, the working title for this was "Scarlet Pimpernel Bullshit," because that's what it is, be FOREWARNED, and appended to the start of the google doc was an angry capslock complaint of my own: "ARIHNDA FUCKING REFUSES TO BE ROMANTIC." Because y'all know how she do. (And I almost titled the this chapter "I don't want to talk about," which is the most Arihnda thing Arihnda ever said.)

_ "Trust? Don't be a fool. There's no trust in politics. Never has been. Never will be." — Senator Domus Renking _

 

 

 

“That's not an Imperial uniform,” Yularen greets him. Nightswan’s speeder is already over the ridge; Yularen’s choice to keep this conversation private, instead of staging an arrest, tells Thrawn everything he needs to know about how much trust he’s earned, and what he can expect Yularen to do.

Thrawn ignores the blaster in Yularen’s hand. “No,” he allows evenly. “I had it made for… situations such as this.”

Yularen manages not to roll his eyes. “Situations where you're offering enemies of the Empire safe haven with a foreign government, you mean?”

“My concern is with placing talent where it can be of the most benefit to all our peoples, Colonel,” he says, “and I meant situations where discretion was of particular value.”

“I wouldn’t call anything about this discreet. You accepted a commission in the Imperial Navy. Does loyalty mean nothing to you?”

“My commission was granted by someone of considerably higher rank than yourself, Colonel,” Thrawn murmurs. There is a dangerous edge to his voice, and Yularen knows his jab has hit a nerve. “Do you think he was unaware of my ultimate goals?”

“I don't know, nor do I give damn, what the Emperor knows or thinks about anything,” Yularen says. “You're right that he'll die eventually, and that we’ll all be better off after he does.”

Thrawn raises his eyebrows. “That sounds seditious, Colonel.”

“And you're going to turn me over to Tarkin for it, I suppose?” Yularen says. He holds Thrawn’s unnerving red gaze. “Pity you couldn't get that man to agree to a surrender.”

“Indeed.”

“I suppose you're ready to get underway with operations, since your friend has no intention of asking his people to lay down arms? Bit tricky to move ahead with an Imperial Governor running around inside the complex, though,” he says, finally holstering his blaster. “Gudry’s lost that woman, and I haven't been able to raise her on comms. There’ll be hell to pay if she gets herself killed on our watch.”

Thrawn frowns, looking toward Paeregosto, and the lights of Creekpath beyond. Yularen has known him for several years and he can tell, he thinks, the difference between a frown of surprise and a frown of —

“Colonel,” says Thrawn, “I will need you to coordinate operational preparations with Commander Faro until I return.”

Yularen is not the best at his job but he is far from the worst. It takes him about a second and a half to put it together.

“For the love of — you can't rush into a rebel-controlled zone alone, Thrawn,” says Yularen, skipping past incredulity and going directly to exasperation.

Thrawn smiles at him — one of those sly, soft twists of the lips Yularen has come to find so irritating.

“Give me some credit, Colonel,” he says. “I don't intend to be seen.”

“Thrawn —”

“I appreciate your concern, Colonel, but I'm sure I’ll be fine. Mistaken for a Pantoran, if anything.” He glances into the darkness past Yularen’s shoulder. “I hope you don't mind my borrowing your speeder?”

Yularen doesn't bother to ask how Thrawn knows that it's there, to object, or to complain. He merely waves his hand like an old parent. Thrawn strides past him and Yularen considers the skyline once more. It was stupid to agree to Pryce’s plan, he thinks, but the woman could be a wicked terror when she wanted something — not unlike the man firing up the stealth speeder behind him.

“I hope she's damn well worth it,” Yularen growls under his breath.

 

~~

 

Arihnda paces the room. Her parents are still upstairs. Gudry’s comm is in her pocket, his blaster in her hand.

Gudry’s body is in the middle of the living room floor.

Her face aches horribly where he'd managed to land a blow, but she ignores it. She ticks through her problems, crafts and rejects half-formed solutions. How many hours will she have after the invasion before the body is found? She can blame the rebels, surely. Only, how will she explain the blaster and the comms? They were assaulted, Gudry fought for them — armed her in a noble act of self-sacrifice, and then — but her parents. Her parents are witnesses. Surely she can trust them not to say anything? She can coach them — she will coach them — she just has to —

Her parents come back down, with their bags.

“Is that everything?” She asks, voice slightly more shrill than she would like.

“I have one more —” her mother begins

“Well, get it, whatever it is!” Arihnda snaps breathlessly. Her mother flinches slightly, and turns towards the stair. Arihnda runs a hand through her hair and takes a deep, steadying breath. She looks at her father, his disapproving face, and opens her mouth to defend herself, but he waves a hand at and follows her mother up the stairs.

That's fine. It's something else she can deal with later. She takes another deep breath, trying to push all the problems that are for  _ later  _ off where they belong.

She turns back to the body. She just needs a story to cover this, first. Something to tell Yularen, who has been hailing her comm relentlessly, and Thrawn, who has started doing the same thing. She can say —

For the second time, an unexpected arrival interrupts her plan.

The door of her parent’s apartment slides open. Arihnda whirls, blaster raised, and stops.

He has both his hands up in a pacifying gesture, palms turned oddly as if ready to stretch towards her. He looks slightly surprised, but more curious than afraid.

“Hello,” he says softly.

Her adrenaline is so high that her eyes take up every detail, even the irrelevant ones, like the way the cut of the collar of  _ whatever  _ he’s wearing flatters him more than the collar of an Imperial uniform. Everything about the sleek, dark, nearly-tailored  _ whatever, _ a uniform but not one she’s ever seen before, one without any insignia, flatters him more than Imperial olive. He looks like a shadow, or like several shadows, all blue, and black, and dark brown. Perhaps that’s the purpose of the ridiculous outfit, to let him hide in any shadow.

He takes a cautious step towards her, gently holds out a hand.

The neatly-fitting jacket moves with him like a second skin. Much nicer than the usual Imperial tailoring. She hasn’t moved the blaster off him.

He’s another step closer. “Arihnda,” he says, voice low and soft, “the blaster, please.”

He hasn’t seen Gudry yet but he will, and —

He is another, small, step closer.

He’ll have to do something, when he sees Gudry. And she doesn’t have a story ready.

She can —  _ Can _ she shoot him? Her parents won’t know who he is, if they come back down — some random alien who — but of course the Imperials will know. Can she say the Rebels got him too? Is that believable? That he somehow met Nightswan here — here,  _ here _ , what is he  _ doing  _ here?

Her fingers are very tight on the blaster. Steadily, slowly, Thrawn reaches out and places a hand on hers. She doesn’t shoot him. She doesn’t move. He leaves his hand resting against hers. His skin is very warm, much warmer than she would ever have expected. Carefully, with both hands, he pries the blaster out of her grip.

After a moment he slides the gun into the waistband of his belt and looks around the room, like a manager appraising a new office. Then he looks back at Arihnda.

She flexes her empty hands once, twice, three times. When she looks up at Thrawn there's something like sanity coming into her face again.

“He attacked me,” she says.

“I believe you,” he says.

“He —”

Thrawn puts his hands on her shoulders. “I believe you. Where are your parents?”

“They’re upsta —” Her mind clears a little more. “How did you know they — how did you know I would be here?” She frowns. “Why are you here?”

“You weren’t answering your comm,” he says. He glances at the corpse in the middle of her parent’s living room. “I was... concerned.” To his credit, he manages to keep most of the dry irony out of his voice.

“You couldn't send someone?” She says.

“Normally, yes,” he says slowly. “But I was close by. I felt this would prove the most expedient solution, given the particular circumstances.”

“What if you got yourself killed?” she asks peevishly. It would have been infinitely more convenient for her to have him on his ship, where he belonged, or anywhere other than here, until she had prepared a story.

“Commander Faro is more than competent to carry on,” Thrawn says unconcernedly. “Though I have no intention of dying.”

“What if you were captured?”

“I felt the risks were... acceptable.”

There is an obvious interpretation for that: in his own estimation of his abilities, the risks were not so great. This is probably what he means. It is almost certainly what he means.

There is another interpretation. A thought that whispers from the bottom of her mind as she holds his gaze, that raises the fine hairs on her skin, and makes her breath catch, no matter that she knows it must be wrong. He might also mean that even  _ with _ the risk,  _ regardless _ of the risk  — furious with herself, Arihnda tries to shove the idea out of her head.

“Arihnda?”

Thrawn looks up, and Arihnda twists as far as she can with his hands on her shoulders. Her parents are standing halfway down the stairs; Talmoor has his arms around Elainye, and Elainye is clutching a ridiculous flower-patterned valise which Arihnda recognizes as her own, from her childhood. She takes a quick, exasperated breath. “Mother,” she says, twisting out of Thrawn’s grasp, striding to the stairs and trotting up to grab the valise, “you should have left this.”

“Arihnda,” says her father, “who is this?”

Arihnda looks back at Thrawn, trying to decide how to introduce him.

“Mother, Father, this is —” she falters. She doesn't know, she realizes, how to pronounce his full name. She's only heard him say it once. But it seems wrong to introduce him to her parents by only half a name. He's worth more than that — which is the stupidest thought she's ever had, ever, in her entire life, and she could just about kick herself for it, and just about kick herself again for standing dumbly in the growing silence.

“I am Admiral Mitth’raw’nuruodo of the Imperial Navy,” he says politely. “You may call me Thrawn.”

Her parents only stare. Arihnda wants to kick them, too. Instead, she takes her mother’s hand, and tugs her down the stairs. “We have to go,” she says. “The Admiral is here to see us safely back to his ship.”

Her father is still standing on the stairs. “That's not an Imperial uniform,” he says.

“The Admiral is an eccentric,” Arihnda says without thinking. As soon as she does, she looks at Thrawn, horrified. He raises his eyebrows at her. She looks back at her father. “Let’s go.”

“If he's an Admiral, what's he doing here?” her mother asks. “Shouldn't he be on his ship?”

Thrawn steps forward and holds out a hand, steadying her mother as she steps off the landing and onto the floor. A gallant gesture, Arihnda thinks, suppressing a snort.

“At the moment,” he says to Elainye, “Governor Pryce’s safety is my primary concern.”

“Father, get down here,” Arihnda snaps. She takes a steadying breath. “Well, Admiral, how do you propose to get us to your shuttle unseen?”

“Cautiously,” he says dryly. “Try to stay close, Governor.”

Arihnda pauses for a moment in herding her parents out the door behind him, as a piece of insight hits her like a blaster bolt. He tells the joke because he trusts her.

She tightens her hand fiercely around the handle of the valise. She understands how to play on trust.

 

~~

 

Her parents make her very, very proud on the way out of Creekpath.

When they finally make it past the perimeter, Thrawn tell them to wait; he disappears — the uniform really does let him melt into the shadows — and returns quickly with a speeder.

The shuttle is ten minutes’ ride away, every minute spent in silence.

They move from the speeder to the shuttle in desperate haste, as if the Rebels might change their mind and come up behind them, blasters drawn, at any moment. Arihnda shoos her parents up the ramp and goes back to help Thrawn with their bags. She and he stride into the shuttle side-by-side, like some grotesque parody of a couple on vacation.

On the shuttle, Thrawn sets the autopilot to take them back to the Chimaera. Arihnda fusses momentarily over her parents before Thrawn comes up beside her and lays a hand on her shoulder. She wishes he would take it away.

“Mr. and Mrs. Pryce,” he says formally. “Governor, a moment please.”

Arihnda nods, and follows him to the end of the craft. The distance is more a gesture of privacy, a signal to her parents that they should behave as if there were a door, than anything else.

“Sit down,” says Thrawn.

Arihnda sinks into a jumpseat, takes a deep breath.

The trouble with safety, the trick of it, is that it lets the weakness in. A person can stay solid as stone in the midst of the worst chaos only to shatter like spun glass the moment they feel safe. Arihnda is familiar with the problem. Since her first encounter with Moff Ghad at the Alisandre, she's honed the work of holding herself together until she has a secure place to fall apart. She knows better than to let herself feel safe when she can't afford to crumble.

Thrawn lowers himself onto one knee before her and bends over, retrieving a medpack from beneath the seat. He rips open a tube of bacta and, eyeing her for a moment, stretches forth his hand and gently dabs the warm gel on the swelling, bloody bruises around her eye. He's efficient about it, but his touch is light, considerate — gentle.

She knows better, but the unraveling cocoon of security slides itself around her anyway. She closes her eyes while he works.

“Tell me what happened,” he says softly, still touching her face. “All of it, please.”

She does. Without thinking, she does. He pauses to ask her for Gudry’s comm, and she hands it to him. She is not sure how long it takes her to tell her story. Less time than it takes to reach the Chimaera, but not much. She is usually concise, but she is having trouble keeping track of herself. Flashes of unrelated memory intrude on the telling — Ghadi, Level 4120, Ottlis and Juahir, Ottlis again, Ghadi again — and she he has to stop them before they pass her lips, has to double back and pick up her thread where she left it. When she finishes talking she feels drained. She is leaning against the wall of the shuttle, head back, eyes closed. She realizes Thrawn’s fingers are intertwined with hers, their hands resting on her knees. Arihnda does not know when this started, and for a moment it feels easy to let it continue. Had he taken her hands to stop them shaking? Something had distracted her while she was speaking, something in her body that felt like white noise, and then it had quieted —  _ her knees shaking, a warm hand laid heavily across them, “stop that, now, and tell me what happened next”  _ — Perhaps that was how. Did she tell him that she almost shot him? She isn't sure. She picks up her head, pulls her hands back, bounces her legs. Thrawn takes his hands away but remains kneeling in front of her.

“We will be at the Chimaera soon,” he says. “I will need you to accompany me to the bridge. You will remain available on the command deck to answer any ad hoc questions from myself or the other bridge officers regarding your observations in the mine. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” She says. Her voice sounds strangely flat.

She is trying to read his expression. His usual, impossible neutrality has been restored. He’s a cypher and she can’t find sympathy, or credence, or hope there. A cold dread starts to creep into the pit of her stomach. She shouldn’t have told him all of it. She shouldn’t have told him any of it.

A hailing beep comes from the cockpit. He hesitates, then leaves her.

In the silence, she stares hollow-eyed at the empty jump seats across from her. Sometime after this battle she will have to tell this entire story again, to Yularen. To Tarkin. To an inquiry panel. She will have to tell the true story, because she has just told it to Thrawn.

So much for playing on his trust.  _ Stupid, Arihnda, _ she thinks.  _ Stupid, stupid. Unforgivably stupid. _

 

~~

 

When they dock, she pulls herself together, or tries. She hands her parents off briskly — too briskly, and brusquely, too — to a baby-faced Ensign, then presents herself to Thrawn. “The bridge, Admiral?” She says. She can hear the brittle edge to her voice.

He gestures towards the hall. As she turns to walk beside him, he puts his hand on the middle of her back, again. It is not a gallant gesture, she realizes. It is a way to push her if she lags, and to pluck at her subtly if she speeds to far ahead.

Control, she thinks: he's got all the control. She still has no idea what she's going to do about Gudry, now that he knows.

The warmth of his hand, the constancy of his touch, stirs a flutter in her stomach. Panic, she thinks.

She's killed an agent of the ISB. She’s lied to an ISB officer, diverted Imperial resources under false pretenses, murdered an ISB agent in the field, and confessed it all to a member of Naval High Command. For the first time in years — since Renking fired her, in fact — she can’t think of a way to take back control.

It’s a long trip to the command deck, and her mind churns over the problem the entire way. No matter what escape she tries to plan she comes back to the hand on her back, and she can’t get away. Everything she's ever achieved is going to crumble into dust as soon as Thrawn is done with her. She’s hanging in the open air with no net beneath her and when he lets her go she will plummet. The bottom is so far down she can't even picture it.

By the time she reaches the bridge she is riding the edge of full-blown hysteria. This is worse, far worse, than her brief experience with raw spice. Her breath is shallow, whistling across her teeth and collecting only for a moment in the top of her chest. This is as much calm as she can muster.

The bridge is aswarm with busy young officers and focused, competent commanders. They call orders and answers across the walkways with a sing-song cadence, pass each other like dancers. Each person has a role and every role is in its place.

Arihnda is too tightly wound to appreciate any of it. It sounds like noise. It feels like a cage.

A handsome man with strong farm-boy face falls into step beside them. Arihnda recognizes him. Arihnda knows his name. Arihnda can't think of his name. “Nice choice of uniform, Sir,” he says ironically.

“Thank you, Vanto,” says Thrawn, perfectly serious. They are still moving at that awful, relentless pace. Thrawn’s hand is on her like a brand. “You will please introduce Governor Pryce to Commander Faro and find space for her at the most convenient tactical display of your choosing; we will need her advice during the second phase of operations.” Thrawn’s voice sounds slightly muffled. Arihnda’s head is spinning. “If you would also please brief her on operations, and remain available to her for the duration. Are Faro and Yularen coordinating on ground operations already?”

“Yes, sir,” says Eli. He glances at Arihnda, a question in his eyes, and her stomach flips. “Sir,” says Eli, a hint of uncertainty at the edges of his voice. “Yularen is waiting to hear from Gudry.”

Arihnda stops.

Yularen will never hear from Gudry again.

Gudry will never speak to anyone again and soon they will all know why.

The wave of hysteria escapes her control. It floods up over the dam she's been trying to hold, slams into her full-force. She's drowning, suddenly, in a flash of images, sensations: Gudry holding the blaster, his fists on her, his arm twisting under her hands, the blaster, the bolt, the warm corpse yielding its last treasures up to her — it's like a holorecoeding on a loop and she’s trapped inside it. Her career, shattered in an instant. The blaster, the bolt. Her career. His warm chest under her palms while she hunted for the comm. Her career, shattered. His eyes, staring at nothing. All her work, gone. Everything ruined. The blaster, the bolt. Everything is ruined and she's powerless to help herself. Her career. She's falling already, plunging from the upper levels of Coruscant down, down into the darkness like she did in that turbolift years ago, but there's no way to stop, and she's going all the way down, far past 4120, down, down, down into the pitch black —

She’s standing stock-still and dizzy in the center of the command walkway, staring at nothing. Her chest is tight.  _ Her career, her career, her career.  _ Her breathing is coming fast, uneven, and hard. But slowly, it settles — slowly, she gathers herself. Like fog chased by fire, the the panic clears from her head bit by bit.

Someone is holding her by her shoulders. Thrawn. Her is observing her face attentively. She can feel Vanto hovering over behind them, feel the stares from other officers.

“Water, Vanto,” Thrawn says softly. There's one of those strange ripple effects that characterize naval vessels; the request goes from Thrawn through Eli down a line of anonymous cogs and a glass of water returns in a similar way. Thrawn hands it to her.

Arihnda takes a deep, slow breath. Thrawn still has a hand on her shoulder. She presses the glass to her forehead and breathes slowly through her nose, counting down in her head from twenty. Then she takes a sip, swishes it around her mouth, swallows. Does it again, does it a third time.

She feels much more herself. Ashamed and angry, and keenly aware of the stupidity of her own blatant panic, but more like herself. The stalled engine of her mind has turned over, started up again.

Gudry is still a problem, but he is once again a problem for later. She can see clearly now that she has at least until the end of this battle before she has to try and solve that problem. She would not have embarrassed herself if she'd left this problem in its proper place.  _ Stupid, Arihnda, _ she thinks bitterly.  _ Stupid, stupid. Unforgivably stupid. _

She hands the glass to Eli, then takes a deep breath through her nose and expels it slowly from her mouth.

“My apologies, Admiral,” she says. She sounds genuinely calm. She sounds cool and formal. She sounds like herself. She takes another steady breath: in through the nose, out past the lips. She feels no fear, no panic. She feels nothing. She feels like herself. “I assure you this won't happen again.”

“No apology is necessary,” he says.

Arihnda takes a third controlled breath. She doesn't look at him. “I believe I am ready to continue,” she says.

“Of course, Governor,” he says, voice practiced and smooth. “This way. Vanto?”

“Yes sir,” says Eli, handing the glass to an anonymous Ensign and falling in behind them. Eli is not as skilled as Thrawn at projecting a neutral expression, and Arihnda decides to ignore him.

Arihnda times her breathing as they walk. Inhale for a count of three, count five out. Civilians overreact to trauma, it’s natural; these officers should be able to forgive her for it. Three in, five out. No one except Thrawn really knows what happened to Gudry anyway; it’s not like they’re looking at her and seeing a soon-to-be-fired murderer. Three in, five out. She is still an Imperial Governor. She tilts her chin up. Three in, five out. Moment of panic or no, she still outranks them all.

There is a short, compact woman at the end of the walkway. Her uniform makes her look boxy but her movements give the impression of strength and vigor, like a fighting dog. Faro, that's her name. She watches Arihnda uncertainly as they approach.

“Admiral,” she says, snapping her heels together and saluting smartly when he's only three steps away, “Colonel Yularen’s troops are nearly prepared for phase two. Air support is prepped for phase one. We’re only waiting on a report from Agent Gudry —”

“Sadly Agent Gudry will not be joining us,” Arihnda announces smoothly before Thrawn has a chance to speak. He turns to look at her, frowning. Thinking. She ignores him. “However, I am prepared to brief you and Colonel Yularen on all relevant intelligence from our expedition into Creekpath.”

Faro glances uncertainty at Thrawn who merely raises his eyebrows. “Ah, yes, ma’am,” says Faro.

“If you bring up schematics of the complex I can show you exactly where to go,” Arihnda continues. Automatically, Faro translates Arihnda’s comment into an order and the ripple passes down a short chain and back. A projector flicks on and spits out a three dimensional blueprint of the mining complex. Arihnda turns slightly to Eli. “And if it's not too much trouble I would appreciate a cup of caf. Hot.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says. A longer ripple passes away behind her. The caf arrives sometime between her explanation of the shield generator’s location and a description of the munitions cache. She can place everything, even the things Gudry only described to her.

She finds that the Imperials don't entirely understand the mine, not the way she does, and she finds that slipping into a didactic mode, adding layer upon layer of detail to the commanders’ understanding of the mine, helping them parse what the ground troops truly need to know, helping them craft an image of the complex they can carry in their minds while they coordinate operations, pulls her almost entirely away from her problems. She feels cool and controlled and necessary. She feels valuable and heard.

She loses track of time, playing her part, watching the officers play theirs, watching Thrawn manage it all. She’s always known his reputation, but she’s never watched him work before, and even in these conditions it’s a thrill. He’s masterful, and more than that, his officers trust him completely. It tugs at some atrophied thing in Arihnda’s heart.

If the spectre of Gudry’s corpse shadows the moment, she ignores it. If the flutter of panic returns every time Thrawn passes close to her, speaks to her, looks at her, she ignores that, too.

When the TIE fighters rise from their hiding places and swarm Nightswan’s ships, Arihnda walks away from Faro and stares, mesmerized, out of the main viewports. She thinks it’s the most magnificent, most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. Thrawn comes up beside her.

“You approve?”

“Yes,” she breathes.

“I’m gratified. But you should return to Commander Faro. We are going to take the mines next, and she will need you.”

 

~~

 

It goes on for a very long time. Little by little, the bridge officers and personnel begin to appear less and less crisp, more and more tired. Arihnda feels herself crumbling, or melting slowly, too. The adrenaline never entirely  _ stops,  _ but eventually the flow begins to grind like sludge. Faro’s habit of pushing at the side of her head when she's frustrated leaves her pinned-back honey-brown hair increasingly ragged and undone. Her square, cream-colored face turns puffy and mottled. Eli’s gaze turns bleary with exhaustion, and his speech slurs sometimes. Even Thrawn looks stretched and worn by the end.

Arihnda’s feet ache. Her head is pounding, vision blurring and sometimes doubling. She catches someone noting the date and time of the final closure of the mine and she tries to calculate it in her head — she thinks that from the moment she called Yularen from her office on Lothal she has been awake, and active, for forty-five consecutive standard hours.

She hears Thrawn’s voice from behind, thinks she hears her name, doesn’t register what he’s saying. Then Vanto is at her side. “Ma’am,” he says, taking her gently by the elbow, “if you’ll come with me? I’ll take you to a private bunk. We’re turning the bridge over to the next watch.”

“Yes,” she says, letting him lead her by the arm. “Of course.” They head down the walkway, and Arihnda feels like she might stumble and collapse any moment. “My parents?” She asks.

“Probably sleeping,” says Eli, “which the Admiral thinks you should be doing, too.” He almost laughs. “I know I’m going to. Trust me, ma’am, after something like this — you’ll never sleep so well.”

She believes him.

He’s right.

 

~~

 

She wakes in the dark, and does not know where she is.

Then it comes back. She sits up with a jolt.

It takes her a long moment to master her breathing.

Gudry is no longer a problem for later. Gudry is a problem for exactly now.

She will have to speak to Thrawn.

 

~~

 

Arihnda does not know her way around the Chimaera. She sees the folly as soon as she steps, freshly showered and crisply dressed, into the hall. She grabs the first Ensign she sees, who jumps like a rabbit. She knows he knows who she is.

“Where is the Admiral?” She asks. She tries to make herself sound friendly. It doesn’t work.

“Ah, in his study, ma’am. I’ll tell Commander Vanto you’re —”

“You’ll take me to the Admiral.”

“Ma’am, I have orders to —”

“You will take me to the Admiral.”

The poor Ensign wrestles with himself. He can’t have been out of the academy more than a few weeks. Arihnda merely stares him down. He crumbles.

“This way, ma’am.”

She doesn’t see anyone she recognizes, which means she doesn’t see anyone she might have to answer to. It’s a blessing.

It’s a blessing that lasts until the Ensign delivers her to the door of Thrawn’s study.

The door opens when they arrive and it’s Yularen who steps out.

Arihnda draws in a breath. The stare at each other. She doesn’t understand the thing that passes over Yularen’s face: it looks like anger, it looks like disgust, both of which she expected, but it looks like sorrow too. She doesn’t know what to do with it, how to respond. He shakes his head, and opens his mouth, and is cut off by another voice.

“Ah, Governor. What good timing. Please, come in.”

She and Yularen exchange another strange look as they pass each other. Perhaps he understands her face as little, in this moment, as she understands his, she thinks. After all, she has no idea what he might know, or might have been told.

Thrawn waits until the door of the study is closed behind her before speaking. “I had hoped you might rest a little longer,” he says without preamble. It does nothing for her nerves. “How are you?”

She looks at him, trying to find the right way to phrase a question that will get her the information she wants without giving away too much. Not that she has anything left to give away.

She remembers the last time she was in this position: nothing to bargain with, nothing to trade, no secrets to keep, waiting for someone else to tell her what will happen next. The last time, Domus Renking had tossed aside like old trash. She believes whatever Thrawn says, whatever he does with her, she will find a way to adjust, eventually, but at the moment she can’t think of a way forward. She only looks at him, waiting.

After a long silence, he continues. “You wish to know what I told Colonel Yularen about Agent Gudry?”

“I am curious,” she says, carefully.

“I spoke with Yularen and, you should know, I also had a lengthy discussion with Moff Tarkin.”

“And?”

“I told them the truth.”

Her heart stops, starts again twice as fast. Her career is gone. Her life is gone.

It must show on her face, because when he speaks again his voice is soft and careful.

“It’s not nearly so bad as you think, Arihnda. I told them that Agent Gudry assaulted a Planetary Governor, and that you defended yourself.” He hesitates, then says: “In your position —” He doesn’t finish the thought.

“In my position, what?”

He considers her for a long moment. “I don’t understand why you expect this to be so destructive for you,” he says finally. “You must understand how valuable you proved to be in this operation. How valuable you have been to —” Whatever, or whoever, he is going to name here, he stops. Then he says: “Neither Yularen nor Tarkin are overly troubled by your attempt to assist your family. Gudry’s actions towards you were outrageous, and it was reasonable for you to protect yourself. They are willing to close this matter without further investigation.”

She looks at him strangely. “I didn’t shoot him during the fight,” she says slowly.

He frowns at her. “A semantic distinction of very little value, Arihnda. As I understand your story, he continued to threaten you and your family even after he was disarmed. And he intended to try and retake his weapon, I believe. If you acted with less than perfect self-control, that is… understandable, under the circumstances. Not ideal, but understandable. Neither Yularen nor Tarkin are particularly  _ happy  _ with the outcome but they are at least able to accept it.” He continues frowning at her. “I worry that you are not able to do so.”

A weird sound, related to a laugh but decidedly not one, emerges from her mouth. “I'm touched, Admiral.”

For a long while, Thrawn only watches her. It is as if he is seeing her for the first time. “Is it so terrible,” he asks finally, “to trust that others might care for you?”

And for this Arihnda has no answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PS Yes it's a CEDF uniform becuase, again: self-indulgent as fuck.


	6. The Bitterness of Defeat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every five times fic needs a canon-compliant button. This extra-bleak number is, obviously, the time Creekpath Kicked the Bucket. (Or rather, the time Arihnda kicked a bucket over onto Creekpath with rather spectacular force.) 
> 
> "The Emperor is very pleased." That line sure stuck with me, folks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is compliant with the 2017 novel and exactly nothing else. I have tried to shoehorn in/handwave away many, many changes to Rebels canon on my way to Making My Point about Palpatine in the context of Thrawn's own larger goals, and I hope you'll indulge me if Rebels is your thing. Anyway, that Point about Palpatine: you know, he's... the worst. Obscure references to Outbound Flight may be lurking here. (They are lurking here.) Obscure references to the Original Trilogy. Well, one reference each, really. This is even more The Headcanon Zone than the previous ones, JSYK.
> 
> Admittedly I'm not sure I've dated things correctly vis-a-vis Rebels, I find the timing slightly opaque (timing of the Novel is a bit opaque too, honestly), but I set it where I felt worked for a very Vietnam-esque retwisting of the insurgency on Lothal in the context of the looming Galactic Civil War.

_ No one is immune from failure. A warrior ... must learn from it and continue on. — Mitth'raw'nuruodo _

 

 

 

The Emperor commends Arihnda for the death of Kanan Jarrus.

 

Palpatine does not consider the fuel a serious loss and replaces it without complaint.  _ One Jedi is worth a thousand fuel depots,  _ he tells Thrawn. Thrawn disagrees, but it is not his place to say. 

 

In one of her wiser moments, Arihnda takes a strategy from Palpatine’s own history in the Republic Senate and uses the explosion as justification for heightened security measures which make it all but impossible for the rebels to accomplish anything spectacular. It is masterfully done.

 

But it is not enough.

 

Denied the ability to execute major actions, the rebels execute minor ones instead. Everywhere. Constantly.

 

The Imperial Government on Lothal is dying like a great beast killed by bee stings, and the Governor seems powerless to reverse the tide of the strange guerrilla conflict.

 

The Emperor’s eye remains fixed on Lothal and this does not help, either. He wishes for the rebels to be goaded into something particular, but he will not explain to Arihnda or to Thrawn what it is. All that is clear is that he is not getting what he wants.

 

As the rebel problem on Lothal intensifies, Arihnda spends more and more time on holocalls with Coruscant. They are all private. They are all, it is easy to tell, increasingly unpleasant. By the start of 3277 LY, the calls are bi-weekly, average two hours, and are not, under any circumstances, to be interrupted. This is not particularly different than the way the calls — infrequent though they were — have been for the past two years.

 

But by the start of 3277 LY, the Governor will not accept interruptions at any point during the day of a call. She takes the call in her private quarters, and does nothing else.

 

This is new.

 

On the day of a call, she will not leave the room, at any point.

 

This is troubling.

 

Sometimes sounds will come out of the room. For a few months after this begins, people gossip about the sounds, in enough detail to make it clear that they are frightening and unpleasant, whatever they are. Then people simply begin to avoid the room.

 

This is mildly concerning.

 

The next day, she will emerge into the world as if returning from a painful and difficult journey, like a person who has spent many hours parted from their own mind and spirit and has had to reel back both slowly with a long and fragile line.

 

Each time a little less of her comes back.

 

There is more rage, and less intelligence.

 

Her work degrades. Her competence erodes. Her orders become stupid, erratic, and counter-productive.

 

This is, simply, a problem.

 

Everything else Thrawn can tolerate. This last, he can not.

 

~~

 

No one is to interrupt the Governor on the day of a call, but neither is anyone going to tell a Grand Admiral of the Imperial Fleet what he may or may not do.

 

The Lieutenant monitoring communications in the Governor’s palace holds himself together with spit and string as Thrawn looms over him, waiting for the signal from Coruscant to end. On a better day, Thrawn might make an effort to put the young man at ease. It is important that subordinates feel they can trust their commanders, but Thrawn does not think the problem is with him personally, and he does not have time to remedy it.

 

“It’s over, sir,” the young man says at last.

 

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Thrawn says.

 

“If I may, sir —” and then the young man stops. The man’s — boy’s — face is very bright, and the expression on it is complex, but not opaque. He is young, and his intentions are good. Like Vanto, many years ago.

 

Thrawn tries to do what a good commander would do.

 

“I appreciate your efforts, Lieutenant,” he says, before the young man can pick up the thread of his thought, “but you must remember that we all have our roles. You play yours very well, which is all anyone can ask. Thank you for your help.”

 

A measure of resistance passes over that bright pink face — he is so very young, and his intentions are so  _ very  _ good — and then acceptance chases it out. He nods, if unhappily, and returns his attention to his post.

 

Thrawn’s time here has worn down some of the qualities that make a great commander, but he has not lost sight entirely of the things that truly matter, not yet.

 

Arihnda lost the thread of such things years ago. Or perhaps she never had it.

 

No challenge on Lothal has been greater than trying to reel in her natural tendency towards overkill, her penchant for monstrosity. This problem with Coruscant, with the person who calls from Coruscant, has only made Thrawn’s work more difficult.

 

~~

 

There are none of the rumored noises in the hall outside her quarters. Perhaps they only occur during the call. Thrawn would not be surprised, knowing what he knows of Palpatine.

 

He knocks, politely at first. Then, after a patient interval, less politely. Then not politely at all.

 

Then he slams his fist on the door three times, and says, loudly, “Governor Pryce. I must speak to you.”

 

After a minute, the door opens, and he can see there will be no speaking to her, after all. 

 

Her body is, presumably, fine. Her eyes tell the rest of the story. There is nothing inside her worth speaking to.

 

Palpatine has been a terrible disappointment, on every level. After his first contact with the man, or whatever Palpatine was, Thrawn had believed, flush with the folly of youth he had truly  _ believed,  _ that Palpatine would be a valuable ally, one who understood the nature of extragalactic threats and who was willing to do whatever was necessary to face them.

 

He had begun to suspect that he was, perhaps, incorrect when Arihnda had talked with him about Higher Skies. What she had told him about the nature of Palpatine’s military had unsettled him: the corruption, the nepotism, the incestuous glad-handing. It had not fit well with the impression Palpatine had first made, years ago. But he did not begin to process the idea in earnest until after Batonn.  _ The Emperor is very pleased,  _ Arihnda had said.

 

He looks at the hollowed face, pale and vacant, before him, and the last of his doubts about this so-called Empire are whisked away.

 

Palpatine is no leader of men. This Empire is no military machine, ready to face the dangers Thrawn fears. The Empire is a construct that exists only to feed Palpatine, and Palpatine alone. And looking Arihnda, Thrawn sees the cost of Palpatine’s appetites. 

 

After the Empire collapses — and it will, like the gaunt thing standing in the door before him, crumble soon, Thrawn thinks — it will be up to him to wrangle and rally and reshape whatever is left, if he can. To salvage anything in it that might yet be useful.

 

He had intimated as much to Nightswan, but he is only now beginning to grasp the scope of the challenge. And he will have less help with it than he had hoped. 

 

Palpatine has been a terrible disappointment, and so has Arihnda.

 

He had had such ideas of her, after Higher Skies. After receiving his Admiralty. After her bid for Lothal. Such notions of her, until Batonn.

 

Life, he understands, is full of bitter disappointments. He is growing used to them.

 

Standing rigid in the doorway, Arihnda still has not spoken, nor tried to. Thrawn recognizes her as an object of pity, but feels little sympathy. She made herself the Emperor’s creature, and as he had told Eli, such acts have symmetry. This reward of hers is precisely what she has earned.

 

“I apologize,” he says. “You are unwell.”

 

“Yes,” she says slowly.

 

“I will speak to you tomorrow,” he says. And he leaves.

**Author's Note:**

> Thrawn (2017) Novel Canon Only Need Apply.


End file.
